


A Walk-on Part in the War, Anonymous

by writernotwaiting



Series: A Walk-on Part in the War [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Empath, F/M, Illustrated by amatasera, Illustrations, Post-Thor: The Dark World, non-human ofc, occasionally NSFW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writernotwaiting/pseuds/writernotwaiting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sannaet/Nadia (non-human, empath) goes to Asgard seeking sanctuary, unaware that Loki is not, in fact, dead, and that Odin is not, in fact, the one on the throne. She has one advantage that Loki is unaware of, however — an empath can always detect a lie, and an illusion is just one more way to tell a fib.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of Disguises

_“Conceal me what I am.” – Twelfth Night, I.1_

She winced again as Laera poked the stylus across her back, embedding the data-ink in a tattoo-like pattern. “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to Jotunhein, instead? I would expect Asgard to become a target once they finish us off here.”

“I had thought of that, but the Great Library was destroyed on Jotunheim and all of my contacts are gone. Besides, their primary target on Asgard is apparently dead. I will have to make a minor breach of protocol and appeal directly to their ruler, but I think I can bargain for secrecy with the research I’ve done.”

“It would be better if you didn’t deal directly.”

“I know, but with his wife gone, I don’t see any other way to guarantee my safety. He will at least be aware of us through our work as arbiters, even though my research there was clandestine.”

Sannaet pulled her tunic down once Laera had finished, and quickly cinched her belt. She winced again, though this time not from the pain in her back. It was getting harder to concentrate as the attacks came closer – the fear radiated up from the streets in thicker and thicker waves. She turned to face her supervisor, “Professor, what are you going to do? You can’t stay here – I can feel your fear. You know they’re coming for all of us.”

Laera’s jaw tightened, and Sannaet could feel the older woman work hard to clamp down her emotions, “Safety in anonymity, dear; it’s best no one knows what I do.”

The explosions moved nearer, perhaps only a couple of blocks away. The enemy would make it to the Archive soon. The terror she felt from the hearts outside became overwhelming as victims flooded through the streets trying to escape. As they moved closer, their fear expanded into her consciousness like air filling a balloon trapped in a space too small for it. She felt her knees buckle and she began retching.

“Get out, now! Before you can’t think anymore. You’re no good to anyone curled up in a fetal position!”

“But you –“

“I will do what needs to be done,” Laera interrupted, “pain builds character, remember?” She said this last with a tight, sardonic smile on her face, as she shoved a light pack into the younger woman’s arms and pushed her toward the portal. “There’s no coming back,” Laera shouted at her, “I’ll destroy all the equipment once you’re through. We can’t risk anyone following you.”

Sannaet crawled through the portal, her head pounding. When she took one last look back, she could see the professor setting charges with the grim determination of someone performing a final act. _It should be me, not her,_ was her final thought before she blacked out from the pain.

****

The nightmares were hideous. Sickening, heaving grey clouds roofed a dark, narrow hallway. Sannaet curled onto the floor of the corridor. She was a stone at the bottom of a river of hearts parting around her, crashing over her as they ran, panic-stricken, terrified, running heedless of obstacles. She felt the concussive shock of laser cannons, and the electric jolt as each heart ripped away from her consciousness – every death, she felt every death.

“Hide!”

Her mother’s voice whispered urgently as firelight danced a grotesque pattern across her face; “run to the shed and hide. I will get them to go away, just make sure they don’t find you.” Smoke choked Sannaet’s breath in the dark. Deep, hard voices shouted.

Her mother screamed.

****

She startled awake and sat straight up. Mistake. _Oh my head!_ She closed her eyes and hunched over.

Then she remembered where she was supposed to be, and the training kicked in. Keeping her eyes closed, she reached out mentally – _how many hearts? Six. What’s their intent? One mistrustful, two worried, two officious, one . . . complicated – curious, mistrustful, authoritative, but not overtly hostile. That last must be the king. But something isn’t right. How long was I out_ , she wondered, _that I’m already caught and under observation?_

The two worried hearts came closer. “Are you alright? The Allfather wants to speak with you as soon as you are able.”

She opened her eyes. They were healers, offering her something to drink. She could also see three guards. _Three? Where did I materialize that I merit three guards?_ She couldn’t see the king. _He must be in the corridor._

As the nightmares and headache receded, she began to think more clearly. She forced a weak smile of gratitude for the healers and slowly stood up, catching herself on the bed as her knees briefly gave out, then straightening up – _pain builds character_ , she thought ruefully, grimacing.

“I would very much like to speak with the Allfather as soon as possible,” she said.

One of the guards went to the door, and she decided it might be best to play it humble, so she went down on one knee and bowed her head.

“You certainly don’t look threatening,” she heard him say – though his voice sounded a little odd. “But when someone materializes into the middle of a weapons depot, I believe I have good reason to be suspicious.” _Shit! How did we miscalculate that badly?_

That news shook her confidence, but she decided to plow ahead, anyway, “Allfather, my world is under attack and my people face systematic genocide. I wish to ask for asylum.”

“Who are you? Who is the enemy you face?”

She looked up as she began to reply, but snapped her mouth shut at what she saw, _Oh my god, what am I supposed to do now?_ There was the Allfather, certainly, but it was clearly an illusion. Where everyone else seemed to see a solid body, she saw a translucent image of the king, and within it the all-to-solid figure of the illusion’s originator. _He’s supposed to be dead! I can’t trust him. No wonder the voice sounded strange._ She had been hearing double – the voice of the illusion, and the voice of the magician within it. She looked back down to cover her confusion, rapidly re-calculating her response.

“Well?” He insisted.

She took a deep breath, _Safety in anonymity_ , she thought, repeating the mantra drilled into all field researchers. “I beg your pardon,” she started slowly, choosing her words carefully as she went, “your indulgence, even. For my own safety, it’s best that I tell no one my name, my race, or even who attacked us. If you can but offer me inconspicuous lodging, I can repay you in a small way by working in your library – I have a gift as an organizer of information and in bookbinding. I am also an artist of small talent, and can trade portraits for such articles as I might need to support myself. It’s best, I think, if I can become Nobody. Nada. In fact, call me Nadia.”

“A sense of humor, even in distress; no wonder you’ve survived. Nevertheless, the question remains as to why you showed up in the armory.” He moved closer and she got a more detailed sense of his heart – the many layers of conflicting emotions. _Ah, yes, it is Loki, after all. He always was a hot mess of emotion. I will have to tread very carefully, indeed._

“It was a miscalculation, your highness. The operator was countering a great deal of interference, and was to sabotage the machines as soon as I went through. We had intended that I end up in the mountains just outside of the city.”

“While that seems plausible enough, you’ll understand why I remain suspicious.”

“Certainly.”

He motioned for her to stand up, as he continued. “The healers wish to keep you here under observation for a few days. I concur.”

He slowly looked her up and down, making calculations as he went, his face schooled into a calm at odds with his complex heart. She seemed harmless enough on the surface – he took a careful inventory: a smallish humanoid – maybe 5’3” thanks to good posture; pale complexion; long, tightly curled brown hair, mostly pulled back in a braid; very dark eyes, dark enough that it was difficult to identify their color; dressed pragmatically in a black tunic, breeches and workboots; a knot-work of tattoos showed themselves at the cuffs of her sleeves; no weapons – that was very odd. “We searched your pack, and found nothing untoward, though the contents do seem a bit eccentric.” Loki cocked his head trying to get a better sense of whether she posed a threat.

She smiled at this last comment, and dropped her eyes so as not to seem impertinent. The important baggage she carried was embedded in the ink across her back; the information-storage technology was engineered to mimic tattoos and would be undetectable to their instruments. The contents of her pack, on the other hand, were almost exclusively personal items, items she supposed would seem odd to a warrior race such as theirs. It held no weapons, and very little survival gear – only a few energy bars, a change of clothes, and a light. Otherwise, the pack carried only watercolors, brushes, and a “tattoo kit.”

“I’ll send someone to the library to talk about giving you space and some kind of occupation,” he continued. “All the same, I will leave a guard with you. As you are unwilling to share the nature of the threat against you, and the cause of the dispute, you will excuse a bit of caution on our part.”

“Thank you.”

With the interview over, however, he still lingered, narrowing his eyes as he examined her face. “You look familiar. Have you been here before?”

￼

She thought hard about her last stay here, several years ago. What would he have seen? _Of course,_ she remembered _, his mother brought the young men into the library for lessons, though Thor mostly managed to be off hunting on those days._ What would he remember? _Not terribly much, I don’t think – I dressed in native garb, and Frigga had, fortunately, thought of a wig, so my hair would have been a radically different color._ Both of those props she was glad to be rid of – much preferring breeches to a dress, and glad not to have to worry about hiding her hair. She decided on a calculated equivocation – “I have never had the pleasure of meeting the Allfather.” And this was true enough. Through the many years she lived there and researched the planet’s history, she had carefully avoided Odin’s notice. Thus, she sidestepped the question, while preserving the truth she valued so much.

He paused, and she could feel the suspicion that lingered in his heart. Then he nodded slowly, and left. It wasn’t over, though. She would have to be very careful, indeed.


	2. Of Misdirection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sannaet/Nadia finishes her time in the infirmary, battling with inner demons.

_“Til then, ’tis wisdom to conceal them.” — Henry VI, part 3, IV.7_

After the first day in the hospital, she became bored and chafed at the need for discretion – this was, of course, exactly why she had been recalled from fieldwork to begin with. Once she had grown disgusted with the authorities, it was difficult to follow protocols. And her anger had made it more difficult to filter out emotional background noise, which further eroded her concentration. Since then she had worked in the relative quiet of home, without the frustration of keeping her mouth shut. Of course, the stakes were a good deal higher now. The imminent threat of death had an excellent way of clarifying one’s priorities. So she suppressed her impatience and waited.

The background noise of the hospital was more difficult to deal with – so many hearts, all dealing with various levels of trauma or sickness. During the day, especially, it was difficult to screen them out since she had nothing to do. This is why the paint and brushes were so important – they gave her a means to focus her attention, to filter out the unwanted noise that kept up a constant assault on her attention. Few at home realized what a mixed blessing empathy could be; some days it felt as though someone had turned on dozens of speakers, all of them playing different music. For great swaths of her life, in fact, she had taken up a nocturnal existence, simply because it was so much quieter at night. Painting offered a form of meditation that made life bearable. So she asked the healers for paper and a water dish to keep herself occupied, and fend off the emotions that drifted in from the rest of the building. She produced watercolor sketches of the room, the healers, the guards, the food they brought – everything – and as she worked, her focus narrowed until the only hearts she felt were those near by. She left the whole stack on the bed when she left as a thank you for their care.

*****

Once she was pronounced fit for release (and apparently labeled “mostly harmless” by security), she was escorted to the state library. Now she was on familiar ground, and was relieved to see that the head of research was still a familiar face. Ellie had long ago proved her discretion and reliability. She didn’t offer a single hint of recognition as they walked back to the rooms set aside for her use, though Nadia could feel the warmth of Ellie’s heart. _Oh Ellie_ , she thought, _you are absolutely perfect_. Such discretion would be vital, as the escort had been ordered to stay for the foreseeable future. It would be a long time before they could share any unguarded talks.

[

Ellie had been using Nadia’s former apartments as storage. She had cleared them out, mostly anyway, so Nadia could move back in. Other than a few stray crates, everything was much as she remembered: a small workroom opened on one side directly to a larger workspace at the back of the library with a long, sturdy table; on a second wall, the workroom opened to a short hallway that led in one direction to a bedroom and in the other to a bath and dressing area. The workroom itself held a drafting table against one wall, a second table in the middle of the room, and rows of shelves lined much of the remaining wall space.

￼As soon as she could, Nadia settled into a routine, diligently remaining as unobtrusive as possible – not that this was terribly difficult once she began working. Nadia remained in her small section of the building as she became obsessive about duplicating the information she had brought, transcribing it and transforming it into a useful, and beautiful, form. In order to maximize her productivity, she slept late and worked during the quiet evening hours. It was much easier to work when fewer hearts were bustling around the library – less background noise. The work had an added bonus in that it kept her from thinking about what she had left behind, and about the nightmares.

*****

 _So dark._ “Do you really mean it? They have no light but the fire?” She looked at her mother in absolute astonishment, running across the chicken yard to keep pace, hiking up her skirts to keep from tripping. “You didn’t have to come, Sannaet.” Her mother flashed her a barely tolerant smile. “If you really want to be a researcher, you have to be prepared for primitive conditions.”

Sannaet bit back a snide reply as they entered the tiny sod house. _So dark._ The smell of peat smoke burned her throat as she stepped down into the dark, chasing the wool cloak of her mother. But she was gone. Not a sod house, but an endless corridor, lined with doors. Books littered the floor – books with blank pages.

Shouting. Harsh, threatening male voices hurled insults she couldn’t understand. _Where? Where are they?_ Trapped.

“Where are you?”

“Shhh! They’re back. Don’t let them find you! Get into the shed. Hide! I will keep them away from you. You must disappear.”

“No, I can help you. Where are you? I can’t get out. I can’t find you.” _If I could find her I could save her. It’s so dark._ She ran down the hall, tripping over books, chased by vague shouts – “Witch! You are no Christian healer. Burn her! Bury her in the bogs for her demons to find her!”

“Mother! I can’t get out—I can’t find you.”

She heard the explosive _Crack!_ of a door crashing open.

She woke to the sunlight bleaching her pillow, wet with sweat and tears. _Safety in anonymity_ , she repeated to herself over and over. _Be no one. Disappear._


	3. Of Cats in the Library

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The official security has been dismissed, but Loki has decided to conduct his own reconnaissance.

_“The mouse ne’er shunned the cat as they did budge_

_From rascals worse than they.” – Coriolanus, I.6_

 

Nadia washed with cold water in an attempt to clear the images out of her head. Pulling on her clothes, she put up her hair, tucking as much as possible into braids before she started work. She had collected a stack of sagas she had read years before, but needed to revisit before revising the chapters on the final battle on Jotunheim and Loki’s adoption. She gathered these and blank papers together and carried them out to the larger worktable at the back of the library, carefully closing the door to her apartments before settling down to work. She kept to herself, working to complete her task and to divert unwanted attention. Truthfully, she felt that any attention was unwanted at this point. A guard remained stationed by her door, but he had clearly become bored with the task. Nadia smiled to herself – _that is exactly what I like to see._ She nodded in his direction, from behind her books, thinking loudly to herself, _so boring! All those big books of poetry, when just over there is such a pretty young girl struggling with a ladder and a stack of heavy books._ In this way Nadia gently nudged the guard’s attention away from herself toward a young student pulling books off an upper shelf. His eye moved as it followed the mental push, and Nadia dropped out of his consciousness.

When she was young, her mother had taught her this trick. Though she couldn’t actually change what people thought, she could subtly divert their attention away from her. She nudged their conscious minds to pay attention to other things. Most people have fairly short attention spans, anyway, so she simply helped keep them distracted. Some days it was almost as good as being invisible. Nadia had discovered that this particular guard had a weakness for pretty girls, and could be easily diverted by the young students sent to the library to brush up on their history. Nadia smiled as he caught the young woman’s eye and began to flirt. _That should give me quite a big chunk of time to work unobserved,_ she thought to herself.

*****

After a week or two playing at invisibility, her status was apparently downgraded from “mostly harmless” to simply “harmless,” and the guard was removed from inside the library altogether. The trick seemed to work just as well with passersby, and she fenced with their attention whenever they threatened to become too interested in her area of the room. It was an effective skill, yet the effort involved served as one more drain on her energy already sapped by poor sleep, and grief.

Nadia suspected that, once her security detail was reassigned, the surveillance wouldn’t entirely end. Her initial meeting with Loki hinted that his suspicions wouldn’t be allayed easily, and so she wasn’t surprised after a few days to feel a familiar twinge at the edge of her range. It had to be him – no other heart carried that exact mixture of sardonic pride, and bitterness. She looked around the deserted stacks for a long time before she spotted movement between the shelves – a cat.

_Of course, he must have picked that trick up from his mother. She was a gifted shapeshifter. It is a perfect skill for a trickster like himself._

Apparently Loki had decided to do his own reconnaissance. _Well, let him,_ she thought. _I’ve got a temporary advantage anyway – an empath always sees through a lie, and a spell is just one more way to tell a fib._ She was glad, too, that she had never told Ellie of her gift – _safety in anonymity_ , she reminded herself. Only the queen had been aware of her empathic ability; basic guidelines for every researcher stipulated that as little information should be shared with as few outsiders as possible. What Ellie didn’t know, she couldn’t be forced to tell.

Knowing there was a skilled lurker about prompted her to redouble her efforts – she put greater effort into pushing back her fatigue. She needed to think clearly. This volume, she had decided, would be her masterwork, and she was motivated both by a sense of duty and of despair. She was sure now that no one at home had survived the attack. If anyone was left, they were, like her, hidden away on distant worlds where they had been posted. This work would have to stand as a monument for everything her people had stood for – truth, history, beauty. She constructed carefully detailed accounts of the key participants in the late wars between Jotunheim and Asgard, building lush illustrations of war councils, battles, and cultural artifacts. Citizens of both worlds would have detailed, unbiased accounts of their interactions. No more misunderstanding. No more lies.

Yet as the weeks ticked by, that feline presence was a persistent annoyance. She studiously ignored him, but he became bolder. In the shape of a black cat, he wandered around the library while she worked, not every day but at unpredictable intervals. This usually meant she had to be on constant alert and had to pack up her work as he came close. Given his past, she knew that the details she described could be less than welcome news. This was reason enough to be cautious. On the other hand, she reassured herself that his attention, while something to be careful about, was not an active threat to her anonymity. She was certain that he felt his disguise was impenetrable, just as she was certain that he had failed to figure out who or what she was. Even if he could place her face, she was just some girl who had worked in the library. She was utterly unimportant. It did seem odd, however, that he kept at it for so long – what, exactly, was he suspicious of?

So it became a bit of a game for her– pretending ignorance while he pretended not to be spying in her – and she sometimes enjoyed it, despite the annoyance. She put up with his lurking, and tried to nudge his attention away from her whenever possible. Occasionally she could buy herself enough time this way to quietly disappear into her private rooms, or at least close up her work while he was distracted. Then she would pull out her watercolors and sketch, amassing a comprehensive collection of portraits: a study of cat faces, black cat on shelves, black cat on hearth, black cat framed by window. Still, she had to pay close attention, because he was better at staying focused than many folks, and sometimes sauntered right up to her work space, curling up on one of the chairs nearby, or jumping up onto the table – in which case, she took immense pleasure in unceremoniously dumping him onto the floor. In revenge, the water dish for her paints crashed to the floor more than once, and one night when he was particularly grumpy he swiped a hole in her tunic.

Oddly enough, when she sensed he was at his most smug, he would inevitably pretend to be affectionate, weaving around her feet and getting cat hair all over her pants. She never got anything done when he was like this, and she could feel his inward smirk when she would finally give up trying even to paint. Instead, she would sit and invent names for him. She especially liked to play on names she’d learned from her research about earth – things she had picked up from her work at the Great Archive – because she knew he wouldn’t get most of the references. One night he was Catsanova (as he tripped her on the way to clean up spilled water), another night he was Cicero when he kept meowing and interrupting her thoughts; he was King Henry when he lounged imperiously on top of a stack of closed books. One night he was in a particularly snotty mood, and dropped a dead rodent-like creature onto a stack of her watercolor paper. As she scooped him off the table, she snidely suggested, “Perhaps tonight you would prefer to be Ghengis Cat, the mighty conqueror? Though I think a black, fluffy cat might look a bit silly riding on a horse and living in a yurt.” She felt his frustration because he’d missed the joke, and she practically snorted when he stalked out of the room with his tail in the air. She knew the remark had probably bought her a broken cup when he returned the next day, but it was worth it.

****

Eventually though, the exhaustion and frustration caught up with her. It had been several weeks since she had been guaranteed an entire evening’s work, and she stayed up later and later in an attempt to make progress. _Why does he keep coming here? He should have gotten bored with this a long time ago._ His presence cost her time, time that she knew was limited. It was inevitable that the enemy would find her, and she wanted to finish her work before that happened. She was so tired: tired from the late hours, tired from the constant vigilance, tired from the strain of secrecy, from the nightmares that waited for her when she slept.

She was tired, too, of staving off the emotional black hole that had taken up residence on the edge of her consciousness – depression sang to her like a siren, _stop pretending your work has meaning and just go back to bed,_ it called to her, _you might have helped someone else to survive, someone better than yourself, but you let her save you, instead_. Nadia was functioning on willpower alone.

Finally when she had a night when she felt as though she were making real progress, he hopped up on the workbench. To make it worse, he was in one of those moods and started walking all over her scattered notes and equipment. She rubbed her eyes and frowned. _Right! I’ve had enough of this._ It seemed hardly to matter whether she got vaporized by the Enemy or poisoned in the library by a vindictive autocrat. So she opened the book up to his own biography – all the way from birth through his imprisonment – gathered up the rest of her notes, and walked away. _Let him read it_ , she thought, _if he wants to erase his own history, there really isn’t anything I can do to stop him_.

She needed rest, and she needed to disappear – to be alone. She left Loki, his tail twitching as he peered at the pages she had left open, then she went into her bedroom and literally tried to disappear. She hadn’t attempted it in a while, and wasn’t entirely sure she still could, but now would certainly be a good time to remember. _I really don’t want to face him right after he’s finished reading. I’m too tired to explain, and much too tired for the emotional fallout._

Her disappearing act was a pretty handy skill, and not really so odd once you figured out the trick, though she had only met two other empaths who had mastered it. She sat in the middle of her bed, put her back up against the wall, closed her eyes, and sort of _became_ the wall. Not literally, of course, the trick was to empathize with her environment so completely that anyone looking around would only see the environment – the viewer’s brain simply wouldn’t register Nadia as being a separate entity. It wasn’t like she was bending the laws of physics or anything. She had just gotten very good at not being noticed.

And apparently it was like riding a bike, because when Loki came looking for her three hours later, all he could see was the furniture. Nadia was relieved. She could feel the churning emotions she had stirred up and dreaded the coming confrontation. The more she thought about it, the more she regretted her impulse. _That was_ _a monumentally stupid thing to do_ , she berated herself _. You couldn’t just wait it out a little bit longer. You had to let him read it. Why can you never, ever follow protocol?_ She hoped against hope that time would smooth out the violence of his response, if only a tiny bit. But she knew a confrontation would come, and she kicked herself for giving in to her dark mood.

****

“Get out! Now!” Laera shouted at Sannaet from the darkness, _or was it Mother?_ “Go now!”

“But it’s dark. Where are you?” She stumbled down the corridor once more, looking for a way out – a door, a portal, transport – but there were always more corners, more doors opening to empty rooms.

Feet. Stamping feet. Running. They were coming for her. And running away from her. She tripped and a door gave way as she slammed into it. She fell to the floor onto something soft – a body. She pulled the hood back from the face of her mother – her eyes stared vacantly, blood splattered her hair and clothes, the head lolled awry and the neck sliced from ear to ear. Sannaet leaped backward through the door into someone’s arms. “Get out!” rasped a voice from behind her. “We will save you.” She turned around only to find herself within inches or what must have been Professor Laera, but half her face was burned away.

“Get out!”

Nadia sat up from her sleep with her heart pounding, and moved to a chair by the window. There, she curled up into a tight ball until the sun rose.


	4. Of Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth will out -- well, partially, anyway.

_“I fear our purpose is discovered.” — Julius Caesar, III.1_

The confrontation with Loki came sooner than she thought. The next evening after the library had emptied and the staff gone home, in he strode, decked out in the full regalia of his guise as the Allfather, complete with honor guard. _Clever,_ she thought, _much easier to clear off witnesses this way._

He drew himself up officiously before he spoke. “I felt that it was time to pay my guest a courtesy call to see how you were being treated.” _Liar!_ She thought. “I am also told that you have some great work in hand. I should be grateful to have a look.”

 _So the dance begins_ , she thought, and paused slightly to judge how best to meet this frontal assault.

She parried, working hard to appear nonchalant: “It’s hardly worth looking over at this stage, mostly just scattered notes and unfinished graphics. It wouldn’t really make sense at this point to anyone but myself.”

He counter-attacked, appearing to be solicitous: “Perhaps, then, you could sit down with me and explain it.”

_Dammit._

She paused again, pretending to sort through a pile of notes, and concentrated on his heart. She didn’t sense any overt hostility, or malice – at least, no more than usual. That was positive. There was anger, but that was always there, almost a signature with him. What was new? _Doubt._ Doubt that linked itself tightly to anxiety. That was an unpredictable mixture.

“I suppose,” she finally replied, “I could show you a few pieces, but I would rather not have so large an audience.” Here, she glanced around at his escort, and tried the humble artist feint. “It’s a bit embarrassing to show off work that’s so far from being polished. Maybe we could take just a few things into this smaller workspace,” and she gestured at the entrance to the front room of her apartment. _Surely he doesn’t want witnesses to this conversation any more than I do._

He nodded, smiled in a way that indicated he had won the match, and pointedly picked up the volume she had left open the night before. He asked his escort to send up some tea, and then take the rest of the evening off. “We might be a while,” he added.

 _Dammit dammit dammit_ , she cursed as she smiled her most gracious smile.

They sat silently across from one another until after the tea had been brought and the escort gone. Then she took a sheet of paper and wrote, “Can you cast a silence spell on the room?” It would do no good to pretend ignorance now.

His eyes narrowed a bit, but he wasn’t quite ready to drop the disguise, and kept up his bluff. “My wife was the magician,” he said, “you will have to deal with me as you see me.”

She was losing patience, and she scribbled another note: “I know who you are. Can we drop the facade?”

“What do you know?” and his voice took on the faintest hint of a threat.

She just nodded at the door.

“Fine,” he said. He walked the perimeter of the room, waving his hand over the walls and over the seams of the door and window before returning to his seat.

“Can we drop the illusion, as well? It gives me a bit of a headache, since I can see both it and you at the same time.” He pursed his lips, and his eyes narrowed – the suspicion in his heart redoubled itself. A tiny little voice in the back of her head reminded her to be careful, but she had little patience for these games, even though she could play them when she had to, and she had never liked catering to ego. He placed his hands on either side of the table as he leaned forward to examine her face more closely, and it seemed as though he conceded just the tiniest amount of grudging respect before the illusion collapsed in a cascade of light, and he remained in his own form, his expression intensely focused.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she got there first – “You look tired.” It came out of her mouth almost of its own volition, surprising her as much as it did him.

“What?” He drew himself up and peered at her in momentary confusion.

Now that she could see him without the illusion that had partially obscured his face, she could see the fatigue that had set in around his eyes. “Sorry. It’s just . . . it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you plainly. It wasn’t what I was expecting. It must take a good deal of effort to live a double life all the time.” The more she spoke the quieter her voice got, as she realized her observation might have been unwise. “You just look tired,” she repeated quietly, and then pursed her lips before lapsing into silence. She folded her hands on the table and held his gaze, waiting for his next attack.

It took a moment for him to return to his script, and he drew his mouth into a thin line as he added new data to his calculations. It was only a moment, though, before he settled his expression back into a mask of authority and leaned forward slightly.

“Who are you?” He asked . . . slowly. She couldn’t quite tell if his curiosity or his mistrust would dominate this discussion. Both danced right at the surface of his heart, so she tried to bluff her way through.

“I told you – I am nobody. That’s the only way I’m safe.”

“How do you know all of this?” and here he shoved the book toward the center of the table. “What proof do you have of any of it?” It was a direct challenge, an attempt to bully her into answering.

She clamped her mouth shut, forcing herself to meet his gaze steadily.

“Is it true?” The mistrust in his heart was winning out, and his face began to harden into a look calculated to intimidate. It was pretty effective, but she wasn’t ready to concede defeat yet. She kept her mouth shut, working hard to appear stoic.

She felt his agitation increase, felt herself becoming a target as his mistrust swelled, along with his need for control. He stood up and moved deliberately around to her side of the table, dragging a chair with him as he moved into her personal space, and analyzed her features, “I know you. You used to work here. How could you know any of these things?” Silence.

“How is it that you saw through the illusion?” Silence.

“Why, _really_ , did you show up in the armory?” He frowned as he peered at her face; he didn’t like not knowing. “You were just a clerk when I last saw you. You must admit that it all looks very suspicious. Only an incredibly skilled spy could pull off this sort of subterfuge.” He searched her face for answers, and for a weakness.

She was in a tight spot now, and had to decide quickly what to reveal and what to leave unsaid. Unfortunately, her exhaustion betrayed her once again. So tired. So much work – for what? She became painfully aware of how isolated she was. Her race, her world, all had been wiped out. _What’s the point of all this secrecy? Who is left who would care about any of this?_ And the closer Loki sat, the harder it became to concentrate – his heart was so loud – shouting its suspicion, its confusion, its emptiness, its uncertainty, its desire for control.

The wall cracked open.

Putting on her very best teacher voice in a last ditch effort to maintain some semblance of control, she stood, motioning for him to remain seated while she explained. He reluctantly complied, his mouth set into a thin, patronizing line, one elbow on the table and the other on the arm of his chair in order to take up as much space as possible:

“I am of the Gwyrioneth.” She took an ironic curtsey. “I’m pretty sure you attended lessons those days when your mother – adopted mother,” and here she held up her hand to forestall his protests “– went through those explanations, though I’m not sure your brother attended them all. Do you remember?” She looked for his reaction, and he gave her a vague, non-committal shrug. “Vaguely. Right. Let’s have a review, shall we?”

She sat down at the far end of the table, though at an angle, rather than directly across from him. “My world is – was – one completely without a warrior class. We are, were, farmers, artists, craftsmen, and historians. We value the truth, and long ago set out to collect the histories of as many races as we could, since many seemed unable or unwilling to do so themselves. Roughly 1% of our population are born empaths. Most of these are trained as researchers who travel out and collect data – case histories, interviews, statistics. Their empathy suits them particularly well to their work, as it enables them to detect lies and see through illusions – you may want to make note of that for future reference.” This was added a bit snidely, and the corner of his mouth twitched downward a bit at the insult. “A rare few empaths who are exceptionally sensitive are trained in spirit work. Their work is particularly important to researchers who specialize in conflict areas. Once they return home the spirit workers guide them through any lingering trauma they might have as a result of their research. I am a researcher, and specialized in the Jotunheim-Asgard wars.”

“Wait –“ he interrupted, waving her to stop and his face rather scrunched up at a realization. “You knew.”

She coughed, and covered her mouth as she tried to keep a straight face: “Knew what?”

“You knew. How many weeks have I been walking around the library in disguise and you knew.” He seemed offended. “How long have you known?”

Again, she wiped her hand across her mouth to try and repress the smile that creeped up at the corners of her mouth. Another cough. “How long have I been here? Four months? I knew from the first time I saw you in the hospital,” she admitted, this time avoiding his gaze to avoid smirking at him. “I can see right through the illusions, and even when you change shape, I can still feel your heart – I know it’s you.” She shrugged in a half apology as she raised her eyes once more to meet his, but she still looked pretty pleased with herself. That might have been a mistake.

Anger danced across his face at being taken in – _she is playing me for a fool_ , he thought to himself, before he volleyed back: “You never said anything. You never even flinched. You’re lying.”

“What would you expect?” She shot back defensively. “What do you think I would have done? Gone to the librarian and told her, ‘by the way, the one being in the universe that your people most fear and mistrust is now sitting on the throne’? How stupid do you think I am?”

The corner of his mouth just barely tweaked itself upward along with one eyebrow. _This could be more interesting than I thought_ , came the concession in the back of his head. He sat back in his chair, transitioning into an affected disinterest. “Fine,” he conceded, “what else ought I to know about you?”

She shrugged again, “As a researcher, I have worked and lived on Midgard, Jotunheim, and Asgard. I spent many years working in the great library on Jotunheim as well as here. Your mothers – both of them – were absolutely invaluable in my work.”

As she mentioned knowing both his mothers, he leaned forward in his seat once more, and dropped his pretense of boredom. Yet she had her own emotional baggage associated with those relationships and her mood shifted with the topic. She had become very close with the queens of Asgard and Jotunheim, and their absence was both an emptiness of its own, as well as a reminder of other losses.

To maintain her concentration, she stood up and moved away from the table – by increasing the physical distance between them, she hoped to decrease the intensity with which she felt his heart. She turned toward the window, and her voice became quieter as she placed a hand on the sill. “I was especially devastated when I heard of Frigga’s death. She had known my mother, and rather took me under her protection when I first arrived. I think she felt like she was doing my mother a favor. She fitted these rooms out for me, helped keep me out of sight even as she supplied me with information only a ruler’s wife could have. I worked here for many years, trawling through the archives, reading endless tomes full of Asgardian sagas. She was always delightful –completely sympathetic to my goals, utterly discrete. She would keep me company in the evenings when her husband was away, and we became very good friends, though I don’t think your father – adopted father – ever even knew I existed.” She began to get the sense she was rambling. It had been so long since she had spoken of these things to anyone, and the stream of words seemed to come out of their own volition. She glanced out at the stars as she thought about those experiences: “Frigga was so commonsensical, a wonderful sense of humor.” She smiled to herself as she remembered. “So unlike her husband. He could really be a cold-hearted bastard, -- certainly if you compare him to your other fa--” She stopped and whirled back around, “Oh shit.” Her hand flew up to her mouth. _Protocol!_ “I’m so sorry. No one ever talks about him like that. I didn’t mean to say it.”

“Did you just call Odin a cold-hearted bastard?”

She blinked, “Yes. Yes, I think I did.”

He smirked – “I like you better already.”

He leaned back into his chair once more, and motioned for her to continue. She smiled slightly– but there was still so much about him that was dangerous – mistrust, calculation, and all that big cauldron of emotion that he didn’t know what to do with. Despite his smile, she knew he was still suspicious, and knew his emotions could turn quickly. She had already permitted her own anti-authoritarian tendencies to show themselves more than she ought, and knew she wasn’t really safe. Still, she couldn’t seem to stop the tumble of words. She reinforced all that he had read the night before – that he had been left in the temple for safekeeping, not abandoned; that once the Jotun fighters had been forced to retreat the priests had panicked, and he had been left behind; that Odin really had thought he was rescuing an abandoned child; that his biological mother had died in childbirth in later years, which had embittered his father – in his grief, Laufey felt then that he had no chance of getting another son, and his desperation prompted him to trace all of his misfortunes back to that old battle and Odin’s theft; that this bitterness made it easy for Loki to lure him up to Asgard in the hopes of revenge. Here her voice took on the tang of remembered anger: “I was working in the library here when you had that first big argument with your brother. In fact, it was right afterward that I was recalled to the home archive.”

“Why?” The interruption, as well as his shift in mood, was unexpected. His hands wrapped themselves around the arms of his chair, while his mouth showed a mild curl of displeasure, as though her anger made her suspect. His heart, however, was still too messy to get a sense of his real motivation. This aggravated her own mood – _why was he always such a mess? Why is he always so selfish?_

She glared at him, her hand still clutching at the window sill. “I was in danger of becoming indiscreet. I had become too involved and my supervisor reported my instability.”

“Really. Too involved? Involved in what?” His sarcasm managed both to impugn her competence, and to sound salacious, a tone he emphasized with a disdainful leer that played across his face – all of which acted like a screechy violin on her nerves. He was searching for the exact emotional button that would once again give him control of the situation – of her. And though he did evoke a strong reaction, it was not exactly the one he had anticipated. He wanted to make her feel small and vulnerable; instead, she went on a frontal attack.

Her eyes raked him up and down with distain, and she took direct aim: “What, exactly, is that supposed to imply? That I played for Team Thor? You destroyed a huge swath of geography on Jotunheim! You blew up their library – such a shit head! What were you thinking? You had such potential; and your mother had such high hopes. Maybe you were a bit overfond of a practical joke, but I thought you’d grow out of that, given a few hundred years.” She felt his anger rising and could see his jaw tighten, but the flashing yellow lights in the back of her head were drowned out by her anger: _No more games!_ “How can someone so smart be such an idiot?!”

Loki rose from his seat as though he were a force of nature, his face contorted with rage. “How dare you speak to me like that!” But her rage was fueled by weeks of pent up emotions, and frustration with the apparent futility of her work. She looked across the small room, and taunted him like a terrier with a death wish: “How dare I speak to you like that? When someone deserves respect, I offer it, not just because some prima donna expects it.” Without thinking, he picked up a mug and raised his arm, but she plowed ahead: “Oh that’s very brave! Threatening a Gwyrioneth! All those years of martial arts and you’re still so insecure that you have to bully the defenseless? You learned more from your adopted father than you think.”

Crash!

The mug slammed into the wall beside her. She flinched at a sudden sting on the side of her face. When she put her hand to her cheek, it came away red where shrapnel had left a small cut. It was enough to startle her out of her fury, at any rate, though she was far from cowed.

 _I should have expected that._ Then she thought about her own self-destructive mood. _Maybe I did expect that._

He had already moved away from the table and was pacing – walking away from her, then turning back as if to speak, then walking away again. For once, his face mirrored his confusion. He hadn’t meant to do that, but wasn’t quite sure whether he was sorry because he’d lost an advantage, or sorry because he’d injured her.

She silently walked past him into the back room and started looking for something to clean her face with in the basin.

He followed, though more slowly, and studied her from behind. Almost nothing about this conversation had gone as he had expected it to. She ought to be terrified – that’s certainly what he had counted on, until she had goaded him into an attack. Now she walked away from him in a way that implied absolute certainty in her safety. _I think I’ve been paying attention to the wrong things all these weeks,_ he mused.

She could feel him behind her even as she refused to look at his reflection in the mirror above her. She pulled a rag out of the cupboard. While she ran some water, she listened to the intense mixture of emotions he broadcast — as usual, it was difficult to sift through. _He is such a mess inside. How does he manage to make any decisions at all?_ “How does he even function like that,” she spat out.

“Not very well, apparently.” She jumped. She hadn’t realized she had spoken out loud. When she finally looked up to see his reflection, his arms were crossed as he leaned on the doorframe, and he smiled sheepishly. She sensed a shift in his emotions – remorse? Concern? _Oh my_ , and it was her turn to be surprised, as she recognized a curiosity of an entirely different sort. It prompted her to see his reflection from a new perspective, and elicited thoughts that were less than welcome:

_That smile could stop time dead in its tracks._

She cleared her throat to cover her confusion, and quickly shifted her attention back to the task at hand, hoisting herself up on the counter so she could get a better look at the wound in the mirror – _nothing in this place is designed for normal-sized people_ , she thought with a frown. He snickered and moved toward her.

“Here” he said quietly, still smiling, “let me do that.” He turned her around to look at the wound.

“I’m sorry.” His voice seemed conciliatory, and his features had softened.

She shrugged, carefully not looking at him, “I bated you.”

“You’re tougher than you look,” he joked, and his touch was surprisingly gentle as he turned her head to the side and moved the warm cloth against her face, perhaps taking a little bit longer at the task than necessary. As he worked, his eyes traveled down her neckline and got caught by a small image just below her collarbone, peeking out because her tunic had gone askew when she turned to face him. He pushed the fabric aside so her could see the entire brand — it was markedly different than the knot-work tattoos that trailed down her arms: a man hanging upside down from a bare tree by his ankle, the whole perhaps only the size of a cat’s eye. He looked back up at her and raised his eyebrow as a question mark.

“All researchers have one of those. It’s given to us right before we are posted to our first project, and goes with a terribly long-winded speech having to do with gaining wisdom through sacrifice, blah, blah, blah.” And here she rolled her eyes as her face became a cynical mask, “You know, ‘pain builds character.’”

He smiled at her ironic tone, but his attention wandered once more slowly down her cheek and the length of her neck to the image, which he traced very lightly with a fingertip. A long-forgotten warmth began to travel through her, and she quickly began to feel as though he was standing too close. Jumping down from the counter, she ducked past him to move back into the workroom. She didn’t see the slight curve of self-satisfaction on his lips as he watched her retreat, a look that erased itself as he second-guessed what exactly it was he was satisfied about.

The pot of tea sat cold in the middle of the table, and she reflexively took the remaining cup, just to keep her hands occupied. They sat in silence for a while, at the far ends of the table. Loki drummed his fingers absently on the table as he leaned back in his chair. He didn’t care for that whole remorse thing, clearly, and he kept looking at her as if trying to decide why he felt that way – his lips pursed while he half glowered at her, sure it was her fault in some way, yet certain also that he wanted to keep investigating.

For her part, Nadia kept rolling through the two stoic mantras she’d heard repeated throughout her adult life: “safety in anonymity” . . . “pain builds character.” _Well,_ she thought, _I’ve got the character thing going for me, at least. But what do I do now?_ It was impossible to tell whether his currently quiet mood would hold, or whether it would be repressed by something more sinister – his self-defense mechanisms were pretty well entrenched. She couldn’t help but think about the path that had created those defenses, and whether that journey was something that could ever be re-routed, a line of thought that eventually prompted her to break the silence: “Were you ever going to tell him?”

His mind was on a pretty different trajectory by then, and he was startled by the question. He furrowed his brow: “Tell who what?”

“Sorry – were you ever going to tell your brother that it wasn’t your fault – that they had used you? Reports from field researchers came in fairly soon to our home archives that you had been manipulated into that attack on earth, that the Enemy had somehow played around in your head so you would retrieve the cube. It was the scepter, wasn’t it? Thanos is a known telepath, and we figured that the scepter allowed him to maintain control from a distance, even as it served you as a weapon. We were surprised that it didn’t come out in the trial, but of course, we couldn’t interfere; it’s not our place. We record the history – we don’t intervene unless under very specific circumstances, because, well, it could get us killed . . .” She grimaced, and her voice trailed off – _it_ _got us killed anyway, didn’t it?_

His face contorted for a few seconds, as he struggled to keep control this time – he wasn’t about to let her know she’d thrown him off balance twice in one evening. Once he’d mastered himself, though, he fell back onto the bitterness that was such familiar territory for him, and his face settled into a disdainful frown: “What good would that have done? It would just have given Odin one more way to humiliate me, one more reason for Thor to feel superior. Better to be locked up for all eternity than give them that satisfaction.” He pushed himself away from the table and started rifling through her papers.

 _Pride,_ she thought, _he’s even more stubborn than I am._ She felt his anger flare up again, and decided to back off. She needed a different angle, something indirect that would force him to think rather than react. She watched his face as his eyes flicked over the various illustrations she had created. His gaze was at first distracted as he only feigned interest, but soon became more focused as he found several that he seemed to particularly admire. Then he stopped altogether to stare at a formal portrait she had created of Frigga, and another that showed Frigga leaning over him to direct his studies. He glanced up as he asked, “Did you create these?” She nodded, and he looked back down at the images. “They are skillfully done. You have an excellent eye for detail.” And as he said this, his fingers gently traced the lines in one of the pictures, his face thoughtful.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she became distracted by the path his fingers took across the page.

His eyes flicked up and smiled almost imperceptibly before they moved again to range over the piles of images and texts she had amassed during her time there. “You’ve been busy.”

“When not chasing away cats, yes.” She answered, re-focusing her attention and smiling.

He held her gaze slightly longer than strictly necessary before turning again to the piles of papers. _Here is a puzzle_ , he thought to himself, _that might actually be a bit of fun to piece together_. The various pieces of her did not fit together the way he thought they would — and he liked that.

Nadia still wanted to push him into self-reflection somehow, and after taking a short silence to recover her thoughts, she settled on a strategy: “You know, after doing some field work on Midgard and researching their cultures a bit, I discovered a religious concept that I came to admire exceedingly.” This threw him off; he actually looked a bit baffled – _good; he’ll be forced to think for a bit if he’s off balance_. “Several of their religions have an entrenched belief in redemption – the idea that second chances are always possible, that someone can do horrible things at one point in his life but he doesn’t have to be defined by those things for all time. He can atone for them, be forgiven, and live a better life. I admire that optimism immensely.”

He didn’t reply, instead looked at her quizzically, as if trying to figure out her ulterior motive – here was another piece that didn’t seem to fit. He opened his mouth as if to reply, but then he thought better of it. He returned his attention to the papers scattered on her drafting table. After a good ten minutes, he nodded to her, put his disguise back up, frowned at her once again, and walked out. Only later did she notice that the portraits were gone.


	5. Of Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nadia receives an unexpected visitor, and Loki makes an unexpected request.

_“Past hope, and in despair; that way, past grace.” Cymbeline, I.1_

 

She slept hard the next day, and worked hard to stay out of sight so no one would see her face. When she set up her easel that evening, she expected the cat to show up again, but he left her alone. The day after, however, she was surprised when Sif appeared at her door. Sif never set foot in the library except to check out military manuals. “The Allfather decided that, since you’re here seeking protection, you should at least learn how to do a little bit of it yourself. He has asked me to give you some basic self-defense instruction.” She was clearly not thrilled at the assignment, and, frankly, neither was her new pupil.

“Well,” Nadia replied, “I hope you have the patience of a saint, because you have 1000 years of pacifism and eons of genetic heritage to overcome.”

Thus commenced the daily trips to the arena, and Nadia’s ever-present bruises. She learned the mechanics quickly enough, and was in decent physical condition, but after a certain point, she never seemed to get any better, and she steadfastly refused to learn any offensive moves. Nadia ached everywhere, and Sif became increasingly frustrated.

It was even more frustrating as there was always an audience. The practice floor was in constant use, which proved a persistent problem for Nadia as she got distracted by the emotions broadcast by the other fighters. Whenever she got hit, it was like she had a silent narrator. Some were amused. Others critical. But most held her in abject pity – Sif was a formidable opponent and had little patience for sloppy technique; in contrast, Nadia’s petite frame was clearly not that of a fighter. She had no chance. The best Nadia could get was a sense of grudging respect for her refusal to give up. Endurance counted, apparently, for something.

Worse was that damn cat. Loki had stopped lurking around the library in the evenings, but somehow managed to show up most mornings to witness her humiliation. And though he stayed far enough away that she could only vaguely feel his presence, she knew he was there, and could see him, as a cat, sitting up on the balcony. _What sort of game is he playing?_ _He must deliberately be keeping his distance so I can’t hear his heart. He’s up to something._

Even as she harbored these suspicions, however, she could not get him out of her head. Every moment not filled with an occupation was filled with the memory of his face inches from her own, the smell of the leather in his tunic, the vision of his eyes as they traveled down her neck, the feel of his fingertip just barely touching her skin. It was maddening, especially when she remembered the reputation he had earned among her people. When she returned to her home world several years before, he had become the focus for vitriolic attacks. Even more than the Enemy, Loki seemed to represent everything her race did not — he was the embodiment of untruth. She could easily imagine what her teachers would have said about her unhealthy obsession — more guilt, just what she needed. Between these thoughts and her nightmares, she certainly wasn’t getting any more sleep than before. The tension, and a growing sense of isolation, wore her down.

The crisis came on a day when Sif seemed to be hitting particularly hard. It increasingly seemed as though fighters deliberately scheduled their practice time to coincide with her lessons, and on this day, Sif had been trying to provoke Nadia to attack, rather than just defend. Nadia became irritated, a state then exacerbated as it got more difficult to filter out the emotional background noise.

Nadia finally spat out at her, “Who the hell are you so mad at that you take it out on me?”

“You don’t expect me to go easy on you, do you? How do you expect to get any better without a few bruises?” Sif wanted to goad her into working harder, and spoke with the edge any teacher would adopt when speaking to a student who isn’t working up to potential. For Nadia, though, that tone was tightly linked to a past from which she had been violently cut off. She thought of Laera’s determined face as the older woman had turned away, and fought a wave of grief that rose at the back of her throat.

Sif raised her weapon for another round, and challenged Nadia: “Come on — it builds character.”

The phrase exploded a damn inside her; everything she had denied, blocked off, or pushed away for the past few months burst out. An incoherent eruption of rage exploded from her mouth, and she pounded the ground with her staff. She shook with rage and tears began to streak her face. The arena became absolutely silent. Sif lowered her weapon, and stared, completely dumbfounded, while Nadia took great, stuttering breaths. She looked around at the other fighters, looked up at the empty sky, and said quietly, “I can’t do this anymore.” She threw her staff away from her, and looked at Sif, speaking more loudly: “I can’t do this. I need to be alone. I just can’t do this.”

Her need to escape took over as she moved through the corridors, refusing to see or respond to anything but the swiftest path to safety. As soon as she slammed the lock home she collapsed in a heap on the floor, and began raving:

“What a hideous charade. How utterly pointless. They’re all of them gone. All of those lives – I should have done something – anything more than I did. It should have been me. I just let her push me through, and now she’s gone, and it’s only a matter of time before they come and all that’s left of me is a little smudge on the floor – not even a smudge, they’d just as soon wipe out the entire building, as make a surgical strike. In fact, that would suit their purposes much better – wipe out the information along with the carrier. Much more clean that way.”

“Who?”

She startled. Her own emotions were in such a jumble that she hadn’t felt him enter, but there he was leaning up against her worktable. The intrusion fed her frustration – _why can’t he just leave me alone?!_ Her eyes that had been closed tight with desperation now focused their intensity on him and narrowed with anger. Her voice became acid as she replied: “How did you get in?”

“I’m a shapeshifter, remember?” He nodded at the open window, and smiled –it was an attempt at a joke.

It didn’t work, and she turned her head away. She instinctually tried to create emotional distance, concentrating of blocking him out of her head and heart.

“They’re going to come here. It’s only a matter of time,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Who? You never said who,” and here he sat in a chair and leaned toward her, arms on his knees. She glanced over briefly; if it had been anyone else, she would have thought he looked concerned, but she dismissed that as impossible, and didn’t bother reaching out to his heart to check. Instead she kept her barriers up, and turned away again.

“Is it possible that you haven’t guessed yet? I told you who I am. Think. Who might have a vested interest in wiping out the historical record? You know better than most that the first thing sacrificed in a quest for power is the truth.” She looked him in the eye as she fired that volley, and he winced slightly. “Who, then, might want to erase history?” He still didn’t respond, so she answered for him, “Your former Master.”

He hadn’t expected an attack like that, and sat back as if avoiding a physical blow.

His reaction temporarily mollified her bitterness, and she backed off on her attack – a little. “No. Sorry, that’s not fair. Yes, him — that thing that got into your brain and manipulated it so you would steal the cube for him. His minions wanted us to re-write history for them, and when we refused they decided it would be much easier simply to obliterate it.” She rubbed her eyes as if trying to scrub them clean. “When they came to our world, they came as fear itself. People ran everywhere, defenseless. Remember – we had no warrior class, the only damn knives we had were the ones we cut our food with – forget any more dangerous weapons. It was like letting a pack of hounds run free in a rabbit hutch. Hundreds, thousands of hearts broadcasting their terror, their abject helplessness: I felt all of them. It still makes me sick to remember it. I felt each one ripped out of existence – all of those lights were there – and then gone. And not good deaths, mind you; not the sort of death where one lies in bed surrounded by loved ones who help you cross over. No, these were the deaths of beings trapped and hunted down in claustrophobic hidey-holes, or killed as they ran in terror, or as they held the mangled corpses of their spouses and children. Every time I go to sleep, I am back at that place; I re-live their genocide.” _I see Laera as she turns to stage her own death to save me,_ she added silently.

The desolation in her face made even Loki shudder, and he was reminded of his own inner demons. “This” and she waved vaguely around her workspace, gestured toward the window, “this is all so pointless. They will come, and the whole history and purpose of my race will be wiped out, and I – I will not be sorry, because I cannot live in that place any longer.” She covered her eyes with the heels of her hands once more, trying to block out the memories.

“So you’re giving up.” His voice was very quiet.

She didn’t bother to respond.

“You,” he gestured a bit unconvincingly, “-- you have an enormous responsibility –“

She barked a humorless laugh: “Don’t you, of all beings, lecture me on the importance of Truth and Beauty – there is nothing left – only death.”

“Then you do not, after all, believe in redemption,” his expression resolved into an odd mixture of pity and sarcasm, as he decided which of her emotional buttons to push, to force her back from the edge.

 _What?!_ Hers hands dropped just enough to uncover her eyes.

“Is not redemption potentially a gift not just for those who _have_ injured, but also for those who _are_ injured?” But even though his face seemed perfectly sincere, she was not willing to be pacified, and steadfastly kept her heart closed to his.

“You are a manipulative prick,” she spat out.

He shrugged his shoulders, admitting as much: “That was quick – you didn’t even check. Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I have told so many lies that you possibly don’t bother listening any more.” His tone was sarcastic, but the look on his face seemed to issue a challenge. _I dare you to believe me_ it seemed to say.

She rubbed at the tension in her forehead, not quite sure she understood what he was saying.

“Start listening.” He moved to sit on the floor in front of her. “You can’t give up.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

He pressed his advantage; “I am absolutely sincere,” he insisted, and moved closer holding out his hands, palms up. “Look for yourself – take a spirit walk.”

“What?! No, I can’t do that.” She pulled back, as if he had asked her to place her hands in a tub while he dropped an appliance in the water.

“Why not?” Again, his expression issued a challenge.

“Dozens of reasons – I’m not trained; you’re not an empath; hell, you’re not even the same species. – You’re crazy.”

He pursed his lips at that last jibe, but chose to ignore it. “You _could_. I’ve done a little research of my own over the last few weeks. Frigga kept a diary – it took me a while to find it, but I knew she had one — I’d caught her writing in it. She wrote that your mother had wanted you to become a spirit worker,” he headed off her protest with a wave, saying, “you’ve already said your mother was posted here before you.” Nadia admitted as much, and he continued, “instead, you caught her obsession for research – apparently she wasn’t happy about that.” She had to acknowledge that he was right there, too. “Frigga also wrote that you were recalled because your anger led to your losing the ability to filter out background noise – you heard everything, and it completely undermined your ability to concentrate. Yes, that was partially my fault,” and again he held up his hand to keep her from interrupting, “but Frigga hinted that there were other incidents that added to your issues. At that point you wanted to stop listening. Now, I _want_ you to listen. I know you can because you _used_ to listen to everything whether you wanted to or not; you _could_ have been a spirit worker had you wanted. Use that. I want you to listen to everything in here.” He tapped his chest. “I want you to know that I’m not hiding anything, that when I talk about second chances, I mean it – for you as much as for me.”

“You and I – we are both survivors. Endurance is part of who we are. I know. I have looked into the same emotional abyss,” and his face filled with that painful memory – grimacing and closing his eyes briefly as he remembered hanging over the edge of the shattered bifrost as he sought futilely, stupidly, for paternal validation that would never come. “I let go.”

He leaned closer and lowered his voice until it brushed against her ears like silk: “We may both be alone. But could we not be alone together?”

His face seemed so earnest, so . . . needy; in spite of her mood, she couldn’t help the hitch in her breath as his eyes pulled at her emotions. _Oh but he’s such a liar – he could make his face say anything._

Finally, she reached out to feel for his heart, looking away, so she wouldn’t get distracted by that seductive face. She sat for a long time in silence, poking at his emotions, trying to find a lie, while trying to sort out her own emotions at the same time. It seemed impossible to believe that he could be serious, but she could sense no duplicity or equivocation, no malice, or calculation. Did he really know what he was asking her to do? She looked back at him once more, while his eyes ranged over her face trying to gauge what she would do. The muscles in his jaw clenched briefly and he wet his lips.

 _Alone._ Her heart rate jumped and her mouth felt dry as she repeated to herself what he had said. She recognized that sense of isolation in his face, even as she felt it in his heart. He wanted a connection just as she did, but a spirit walk would open him up to a vulnerability experienced by very few – it would open up his entire heart. Surely he knew that.

It was more than just asking her to verify information. It was a gift.

Did he believe in redemption?

Did she?

She shifted her position to face him, pulling her knees away from her face to sit cross legged while she searched his face. He glanced down briefly before reaching across to slip his fingers underneath hers, running his thumb lightly across her knuckles. She inhaled deeply to clear her thoughts, blowing the air out through taut lips.


	6. Of Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You have to go in,” she quietly insisted. “If you never face what’s in there, you will always be stuck here, in this place. You will try your whole life to leave it, but you will always end up right back here, right at this fear.”

_“The dream’s here still: even when I wake, it is_

_Without me as within me; not imagined, felt.” Cymbeline, IV.2_

 

“Ok.”

She blinked, absently curling her fingers around his. She took another long pause as she decided how to proceed. A tiny curve played at the corner of his mouth as he waited, but for once it contained neither irony nor triumph. His eyes remained soft, and free of tension.

She dropped her eyes to look at their hands. “Here is what you need to do,” she began, while his gaze remained focused on her face. “Because you are not empathic, it might seem as though nothing is happening. In fact, it probably will – it will sort of be like you talking in one room while I’m listening in another – you would never know.” And here, she looked directly into his eyes. “The thing is, once I’ve started the spirit walk, you cannot break physical contact with me, no matter how bored you get, no matter how long it takes for me to come back, because if you do, I will get lost in there,” and he looked down as she pointed to his heart. “The spirit workers were very clear on that point when they worked with me, after I,” and here she cleared her throat, “got sent home. Don’t break physical contact, because it’s easy to get lost.” He nodded, more firmly lacing his fingers with hers.

“I don’t know how long this will take, because I have no idea what’s in there. It could be a fairly straight path,” and here she finally turned to face him. “More likely, though, it’s an ungodly mess.” He gave a sardonic laugh at that. “Can you do something to make sure no one comes in, and no one overhears anything?”

“Yes.” He stood and walked around the room, running his hand across the walls, pausing a bit at the doors and window as he outlined their seams with a faint glow. She waited for him to finish and fold himself back onto the carpet.

“Ok.”

Another deep breath.

She reached her left hand across and took his left hand, and then she reached up and placed her right hand on the side of his face, resting her fingertips in his hair, with her pinky beneath his ear. He closed his eyes briefly and leaned into her touch before catching her gaze once more. She looked into his eyes.

Her pupils became enormous.

Her breathing slowed.

She closed her eyes.

****

He did get bored. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. He had just about memorized every vein in her eyelids, and begun to count her lashes, when her eyes began moving underneath the lids, and her face began to twitch, as though she were dreaming. Without thinking, he reached up to smooth away the tension in her face. He closed his eyes just for a moment, as he savored her warmth, and

****

He found himself on a narrow track through a valley where he had often gone as an adolescent to escape his brother’s long shadow. He knew it intimately – every bend, tree root, rocky crag, as well as the narrow path that led up the craggy hill beyond. The valley was whipped by heavy winds, and the sky roofed by boiling clouds. Nadia stood just ahead of him at a point where the track wound along the stream, looking out across the water and up to a point where a break in the clouds shone onto the side of the hill. In her hand she held a ball of light that pierced through the gloom of the clouds. Her hair and clothing also seemed to give off a soft light, illuminating the stormy twilight. She looked back at him and nodded curtly, “You came – excellent. This will be much easier, now.”

￼

He ran to catch up. “Where are you going?”

“We have to find the center – the eye of the storm,” she shouted over the wind, and pointed to the distant patch of blue sky. “We’ll never solve the problem if we can’t find what’s up there.” Her answer left him nonplussed.

“What problem?”

She didn’t answer, just kept walking, stoic. It was wretched work. As they moved through the valley, trees blocked the wind, but roots caught at their feet, loose gravel gave way beneath them, and branches caught at their clothes. Eventually they came to a crossing spanned by a rickety structure that was a bridge in name only. Nadia paused here briefly to look back and make sure he was behind her, then kept going, pulling Loki behind her with the force of her self-assurance and determination. The path became narrower and seemed less certain as they began climbing. Switchbacks increasingly left them exposed to the wind and revealed precipitous drops. Then abruptly,

Nothing.

The path turned into a small glade in which it was completely still, and silent. The trees and short grasses stood unmoving, and the sun shone down on a tiny little house. Something was crying inside.

“You can’t go in!”

It was a boy – jet black hair, his face fierce, and his fists up. “It’s too dangerous. You can’t go there!”

“What’s inside?” he asked the boy.

“It’s a monster,” and as he said it the boy’s eyes grew wide with fear and hatred. “It will eat the heart out of you.”

Loki looked at his guide, brows furrowed with uncertainty. She was as calm as the grass in which they stood. She stood her ground, “You have to go in.”

“No! You can’t!”

“You have to go in,” she quietly insisted. “If you never face what’s in there, you will always be stuck here, in this place. You will try your whole life to leave it, but you will always end up right back here, right at this fear.”

She held out her hand to him with calm authority; “I’ll go with you.”

He took her hand, opened the door, and walked into

a nursery.

There was a baby in a crib, crying, but it was no ordinary baby. Its skin was blue-grey and traced by a pattern of lines. When it breathed, little puffs of frosty air came out of its lungs. He recoiled. “He’s lonely,” she prompted gently. “Pick him up. Comfort him.”

“No!” It was the little boy outside, “It’s a monster. Kill it!”

But as before, she insisted, “No, he needs to be held. Take him up, and take him with you.”

Loki looked at her once more for reassurance, then reached down and picked up the child. It was much lighter than he thought it would be, and as he pulled the infant to his chest, its crying slowed; its breathing calmed, giving out little hiccups as it recovered its breath. He had always rather thought the attraction of babies a bit of a mystery; what possible appeal could there be in carrying around something that made such unpleasant noises and smelled like poo. But holding this child was like holding comfort itself. It fit into the curves of his breast and shoulder just so, and nestled close into the crook of his neck.

“Now,” she said, gently taking his elbow and steering him toward the door, “take him home with you.”

“Where is that?” The child felt so good in his arms, he didn’t even think to question her advice, didn’t really even look at her, because he was so focused on the bundle he held.

“Just start walking. I’ll stay with you.”

They left the cottage. The little boy was gone. The wind outside had slowed to a strong breeze, the clouds still threatened, but no longer boiled with rage. She followed behind, rather than led.

They crossed the glade and began their descent down the far side of the hill.

He stumbled on a rough patch in the path, and put his hand up to protect the baby, but it had disappeared. Instead, a young boy walked by his side. Like the infant, his skin was traced with a pattern of fine lines, his eyes red. Yet his gait was confident, his smile engaging, and when he reached out his hand, Loki took it instinctively.

The path had become broad enough that they could walk abreast, and its slope had become gentler.

At its base, they came to a stream once again, but could see no bridge across it. He turned back to her for the first time since leaving the house, eyebrows raised, questioning.

“You must cross it,” she said matter-of-factly.

“How?”

His new companion knelt down and breathed across the water, freezing it solid. They walked across.

The wind slowed to a light breeze, and the clouds began to break up. His companion looked at him eye-to-eye now, fully grown, muscular, handsome. They looked out over a vast lake where Loki had spent many hours as a child, playing, running, daydreaming as he listened to the low hiss of the water while swallows danced above him.

“You are home now,” the young man said, and walked toward him, then into him and became part of him.


	7. Of Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She held his gaze steadily, feeling the anger that threatened once again to catch fire if it found even the smallest tinder. It competed now, though, with a new melody she hadn’t heard in him before, and it was glorious – hope. It intoxicated her as few other emotions could."

_“Ne’er was a dream so like waking.” – A Winter’s Tale, III.3_

 

His eyes opened. _I must have fallen asleep_. Her eyes were still closed, and he could feel she was struggling with something. A nightmare. Terror. Death. Panic. He knew. He could **feel** her fear – _how can that possibly be?_ He called to her, “Sannaet” – _How do I know her name?_ But he kept calling to her, “Sannaet.” Her struggle became more physical, and her face contorted to reflect her dreams. Suddenly, she threw out her arms as if to ward off some blow, and her eyes flew open, her pupils like saucers, still haunted by her own dreams, but for some reason she apologized for leaving him — “I’m sorry. I got lost. I tripped. My foot was caught, and then I couldn’t find you. I got lost.”

“It’s ok,” he replied, pulling her close, “I found my way home.”

It was only then that he noticed his hands, well, one of them. It was grey-blue and traced with a pattern of fine lines. He looked at her for an explanation, horrified. She began to recover from her own ordeal, and seemed unsurprised by his appearance, but he panicked, and rushed to the mirror in the back room. His face, too, had changed. Half the face was the face he had always known, but the other was that of a monster — a frost giant, red eye, blue-grey complexion, a swirl of lines across his cheek – precisely the face of the young man in his dream. Even as he looked the color began to fade, but he remained mesmerized — horrified.

Coming up behind him, she touched his arm, and he whirled around, brows pulled together in frustration and self-hatred. “Are you not disgusted by this? By me?”

“No.” She smiled as she reached up and gently, slowly traced one of the lines across his cheek even as it faded away. _How could he not see how beautiful he was?_ “I think it’s glorious.”

He caught her hand as if it burned him, and searched her face for some sign of mockery, or irony. He moved the stray hair away from her face with his other hand, and looked again. Nothing. She held his gaze steadily, feeling the anger that threatened once again to catch fire if it found even the smallest tinder. It competed now, though, with a new melody she hadn’t heard in him before, and it _was_ glorious – hope. It intoxicated her as few other emotions could. In response to that hope, her face flushed with a responding joy – and his hope fed on that joy. He could feel it, and it pushed back his anger, until it was joined by another kind of warmth altogether, a warmth that evoked an answering heat deep in her core. The knots in his face came undone. He wet his lips as his pupils dilated. Her pulse beat more rapidly as her mouth opened just enough to let out the tension in her chest. He leaned in and barely, just barely, brushed her lips with his own, breathing in. She closed her eyes as he tasted her again, a lick on the lips that became a soft kiss. She melted into that kiss with a sigh he thought would break his heart, but he pulled back with a sly grin. He purred as he tangled his fingers deeper into her hair, and slowly pulled her head to the side and brushed his lips across her cheek, traced the shape of her ear, kissed and licked his way down her neck and breathed in the scent of her in deep hungry draughts.

She clung to him, all rational thought drowned in the need that echoed between their hearts and became magnified with each reverberation. She heard herself mew out tiny gasps every time his lips contacted her skin, while each sound she made sent off a shower of sparks inside him.

When he reached the line of her collar, he began opening buttons, nuzzling aside the fabric to taste her shoulder, her collar bone, pausing just briefly once more at the tiny hanging man. At his hesitation, she moved her hands to loosen her buckle, but he blinked, refocused his attention with a smile and pulled her hands away, holding them behind her back: “I prefer,” he said playfully in a voice that liquified what remained of her insides, ”to open my own presents.”

He carried her into the next room and set her on the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of her. He pushed the tunic off her shoulder and tasted her skin, while her breath came faster and she whimpered. His kisses crept lower. She arched her back to meet him. Finally he brushed her nipple with his tongue, took it into his mouth, sucked it, teased it. He felt her heat, just as she was filled with his need, and his hand slid up her thigh. Her let go of her hands to slide her breeches off, before once brushing his fingertips across her soft skin. She gasped as he reached her wetness, groaning as he ran his thumb across her warmth, and he felt her shudder as his fingers slid inside. She wrapped her hands in his hair and tried not to scream. He covered her mouth with his as she came, drinking in her pleasure as she clung to him.

He crawled up on the bed, stripping as he went, then pulled her on top of him. As he lay underneath her, she could see the scars that still lingered as the testimony of some unnamed torture, and she traced them with her hands as she took him into herself. She arched her back as he caressed her skin, cradled her breasts, pulled at her nipples. Their pleasure multiplied through their lingering empathic connection – they were all sex. She moved slowly as she braced herself against the frame of the bed, then faster as he moved his hand to exact point where their bodies met.

They came together in an explosion intensified by their losses, their loneliness, and their need.

****

It was very late when he finally left. He had duties to take care of in the morning in his disguised life that would not wait. He shifted back into a cat, and slipped out the window.

She lay still in the darkness, hugging her pillow close, trying hard to focus on his scent.

****

It took some time to recover from that storm. She kept to herself much of the next day, and managed to avoid Sif for a day more before finally seeking her out to apologize. “I am so sorry. I have never in my life lost control like that before. I had no idea how much I had bottled up.”

Sif smiled affectionately before she answered. “You owe me no apology. I respect your honesty, and your willingness to work hard. Every warrior reaches that same point, where they break and must re-build. Such a crisis is not a weakness, it’s a sign that you’re making progress. We should resume your training as soon as possible.” Sif had always associated brainwork with softness, and had little respect for those who chose that life, but now recognized a grit within Nadia that she had refused to see before. She spoke to the smaller woman with an earnestness that was almost overwhelming, and though Nadia dreaded those lessons, she was touched by Sif’s concern and new respect.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she said, smiling ruefully.

“Oh, I am,” Sif replied, and put her hand on Nadia’s arm affectionately; “I won’t let you quit any more than I would my own sister. I will have failed you.”

“Let’s give my bruises a couple of days to heal, at least.”

“That’s fine,” the other woman replied, giving her a smack on the back as they parted. “But not too long. You’ll grow rusty.”

*****

When she returned to her rooms, Loki was waiting for her. His long legs stretched out in front of him as he leaned against the table in her workroom, arms crossed.

She leaned up against the door behind her and mirrored his posture by crossing her own arms, as well. “That’s really not fair, you know. I’m going to start closing that window.” But despite the bite to her words, she couldn’t help the way her eyes slowly traveled their way up from his boots, over his long legs, and across his chest before reaching those devastating eyes.

He licked his lips just slightly, “Please don’t. I’d have to resort to subterfuge.”

“That’s not much of a leap.”

“I brought you something to drink.”

“How did you manage that as a _felis silvestris_?”

He raised his chin and smiled smugly before moving in close. “Subterfuge,” he whispered and deftly wrapped her legs about his waist as he picked her up.

He carried her to the table and sat her on top of it as he drew his mouth to hers. She pushed her hands up the back of his neck and into his hair while his moved down to free her belt. He slowly disentangled his lips from hers and knelt in front of her to unlace her boots, inching them off each foot as he massaged her calves before sliding his face along the inside of her thighs and moving back up to bury his face in her neck. Wrapping an arm around her back he lifted her up just enough to slide her breeches off and let them slip to the floor.

“Have you been thinking about me?” He crooned softly and sent a shiver down her spine. “I have thought of little else,” she breathed in reply, and nipped at the soft flesh of his neck.

His hand traveled up her thigh until his thumb rested precisely at her most sensitive point – “so wet,” he chuckled into her ear; “I might be tempted to think you enjoy this.” But she had lost all linguistic capacity at that point and could only nod, and whimper before a tiny squeak escaped as he slid his fingers into her warmth. She closed her eyes and sank her nails into his scalp.

“Oh yes,” he muttered as he pulled her head back with his free hand and savored the look on her face, watched her throat as she swallowed hard, and as her forehead contracted with anticipation.

Just at that moment he moved his hand away from that delicious wetness and thrust himself into her, moving both hands to hold her hips. She bit down hard on his shoulder to stifle a scream. She had no idea how he had gotten free of his trousers, and frankly didn’t care. She moved her hand from his neck to his broad back and held on with all her might. When she came, the pleasure was almost unendurable.

“Oh fuck,” was all she could manage to say in the aftermath.

“Yes,” he answered with a broad smile, “yes we did,” before picking her up once more and moving into the bedroom.


	8. Of Mending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He screwed up the side of his mouth, and sobered as he thought things through, then he added, “I think I will need a mediator.”  
> “Probably,” not sure she liked the direction the conversation was headed.  
> “And I think,” he said with a bit of hesitation, schooling his face into a disinterest at odds with his heart, even as he took her hand, “that would be you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of exposition in this one.

_“Any thing that's mended is but patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.” – Twelfth Night, I.5_

￼

“I think,” he said after a few days, “I think it might be time for the atonement part.”

“You’re going to talk to your brother?”

“Well, yes,” he began, “but I think perhaps I will need to start with the cold-hearted bastard first.” But even though his words were playful, his mood was somber.

“Oh yes,” she smiled, briefly, “I think perhaps you’re right.” She had avoided asking about Odin, because part of her didn’t really want to know what had happened. _Time for the end of that little bit of denial,_ she thought. “Where is he?”

“Well,” he began, looking very serious, “Frigga’s death was a heavy blow, and this was intensified by Thor’s betrayal, kidnapping that woman and hijacking an alien ship against Odin’s express commandment. When he discovered that I had survived, he was quite grateful to hand over the throne and go off into quiet retirement.”

She rolled her eyes, “Lying.”

He cleared his throat and gave her a frustrated look. “The shock of events sent him into the Odinsleep when I returned from Svartalfheim. He is laid out in a back bedroom of the royal apartments. No one goes there, of course, because they think I’m him.”

She shook her head: “You’re still lying.”

He grumbled, “This empathy thing of yours is most inconvenient.”

“Where is he?”

He pursed his lips in frustration and admitted, “He _is_ in stasis, but he is in a freezer in the back of a weapons depot – the one where you materialized when you first arrived, actually. That’s why I began watching you so closely. I was sure you had discovered something and had plans to pull him out.”

“Ah,” then she snorted, “then he really is a cold-hearted bastard.” His eyes twinkled. “You will have to pull him out and somehow get him someplace quiet where you can talk undisturbed. That will be tricky.”

“Yes.” He screwed up the side of his mouth, and sobered as he thought things through, then he added, “I think I will need a mediator.”

“Probably,” not sure she liked the direction the conversation was headed.

“And I think,” he said with a bit of hesitation, schooling his face into a disinterest at odds with his heart, even as he took her hand, “that would be you.”

She took a deep breath, and pursed her lips.

“Will you?” He pointedly didn’t look at her when he asked this, as if he were afraid to see her reaction. This question was terribly important, but he didn’t want to admit just how important.

She thought long and hard about his request. It was perhaps the best chance at reconciliation. Her voice would carry the weight of authority, not because of her own merit, but because of the reputation her people had as unbiased arbitrators.

“You realize it could increase my risk of being discovered.” And here she talked past him rather than facing him directly and massaged his hand while she spoke. “Your sudden reappearance and reconciliation would raise questions. My involvement will be difficult to suppress.”

“I’ve thought about that, but I don’t believe the risk is as great as you seem to believe.” He also spoke to the floor, rather than to her. “Asgard sits in a position of nearly unprecedented strength. It would be foolhardy for them to risk an attack.”

Nadia was less than entirely reassured. On the other hand, her secrecy here only delayed what seemed inevitable. _At least I might do some good before I’m discovered_ , her decision colored by what could be described as an oddly optimistic fatalism.

“Ok.” When she said it, he exhaled as though he’s been holding his breath, and he offered her a grateful look.

“I’ll have to dredge up some long lost diplomatic training,” she smiled. “Those lessons were a very long time ago.” _As in two classes I was forced to take in school,_ she thought regretfully.“And I will need someone to tailor a uniform.”

“Whatever you need,” he replied with visible relief.

“And I will need to travel to Jotenheim for a day or two.” That puzzled him, but she didn’t think she ought to explain herself quite yet.

****

The meeting took place in a room specially arranged to standard specifications for such hearings, at least as closely as Nadia could remember: plain, with no windows to spy into, or wall decorations behind which listening devices could be hidden. A single, round table with four chairs was all the furniture it contained. A plain recording device sat in the middle of the table. She had robes tailored to mimic those of a famous Mediatrix she recalled studying in school, and, as far as possible, anyway, she modeled her own deportment after the no-nonsense confidence of her mentor, Professor Laera.

She had gone to Jotenheim in hopes that a representative could be persuaded to attend and broach the topic of reparations for their world, even better if that representative could be a member of the ruling family – and a relation of Loki’s, as well. A third party to the talks would help diffuse tensions. It had been tricky, but the government eventually agreed, the negotiator appointed and given strict instructions.

Nadia didn’t ask how Odin was conveyed to the negotiations.

It was not precisely a happy family reunion, but the formal nature of the mediation put everyone on their best behavior. Nadia was able to correct misconceptions on all sides that had arisen during course of their conflicts. Odin agreed to help re-build what had been destroyed over the course of their long series of wars. A reconciliation of sorts was finally parleyed between adoptive father and son, even if it wasn’t filled with sweetness and light. As Thor had clearly disavowed all desire to rule, Loki would take on a role akin to a stewardship and be named heir apparent. Many stipulations, wherefores, and under-which-circumstances were included in this agreement, but clearly spelled out relationships that had been left maddeningly vague in the past. Discussions between Loki and the ambassador from Jotenheim were also strained, but a path toward positive relations seemed to open.

****

As talks concluded, Loki’s thoughts turned to his brother.

“Well, you have to speak to him eventually,” Nadia agreed, “though I suspect that interview might actually be a bit more difficult than this.” He ran his hand across his forehead, nodding. “And I think,” she added, “that your adopted father should serve as your mediator rather than me.”

Loki was not convinced. “Why is that better?”

“As I recall, Loki, your brother did his level best to skip most of the library excursions your mother organized. I’m fairly certain he will find a warrior’s voice more convincing than mine.” He made the concession, and Odin agreed to intercede. She would just wait to hear the results.

She was right, of course. Bureaucratic niceties are always easier to sort out than sibling relationships. Thor had been on earth with Jane – an absence that had made Loki’s deception on the throne much easier. Once Thor returned, his reaction was as predictable as it was volatile. It took more than one meeting to resolve their issues. There was a good deal of shouting involved, and perhaps a couple of broken chairs, but over a couple of weeks, native intellect and genuine affection eventually sorted through the mess.

*****

Nadia and Loki rarely saw one another during this period of negotiation, or during the drawn-out process of Loki’s reintroduction to Asgardian society. Their time together remained clandestine, while his reintroduction was carefully managed. Few people would be quick to forgive. Nadia had this reinforced explicitly once she resumed practices with Sif. The warrior class fosters fierce loyalty, but is slow to forgive betrayal. Sif was no exception. Loki’s name had become one of her favorite curses, and she was not alone. Because of this, Nadia and Loki decided it best that no one know of their partnership until he had somewhat burnished his reputation.

When he could, he snuck in and read to her while she painted. She painted all the time now, as she worked hard to push away the thoughts of loss, and her fears. Though Loki had pulled her back from the darkest of her inclinations, she had not been able entirely to re-cork the emotional bottle that had opened up. The mediation of her art and Loki’s presence were the only things that kept panic at bay. Instead of working on her histories, she re-created memories from a happier time in her own life. She began by sketching cityscapes of Helsingor, home of the Great Archive where she had worked for so many years – beautiful glass buildings, terraces festooned with flowers, parks lined with cool ponds and creeks. She also recreated those spaces where she spent so much time – compact storage rooms in the basement of the archives, workrooms lit by the large windows above ground, the public rooms of the archive that hosted events and tours. As she remembered these places, she managed to suppress, temporarily, at least, the turmoil within. Later she began a set of portraits: Professor Laera, a few colleagues from the Archive, family members. While she painted, Loki quizzed her about the images, where was that? How is that significant? Who is that?

One afternoon as she began a portrait of her family, Loki sat behind her, head cushioned in his arms on the back of her chair, half asleep. She filled in most of the figures easily — her father with his brushes and paint-stained clothes, her little sister cradling a cherubic toddler, her older brother whose sardonic face looked out the window rather than at the viewer. Loki listened to her stories about sitting in her father’s studio while he worked, and about playing with her sister’s children. He noticed, though, that she never mentioned her brother, even though he had his place in the picture.

All of the figures seemed to emerge easily from her brush. When she began filling in her mother’s place, though, she worked backwards. She started with her clothing, re-creating a gown and cloak so precisely they seemed to move with a breeze from the open window. She then spent unusual care on the wrists, hands and fingers. Loki watched the brush glide across the page, and the colors curl away into the rinse water. All that remained was the face, yet a blank white space stared out from the page. Nadia stared back. Loki drew his brows together at her delay, until she finally screwed up her face in frustration and put down the brush.

“I can’t remember what she looked like,” she finally admitted, and looked back at him with a frustrated, humorless smile.

He brushed at the hair that had become loose at the nape of her neck: “What do you remember?”

His touch tickled, and she smiled against her will, catching his hand between her chin and shoulder as he made her shiver. She pulled his hand down to her lap, and held on. “All I remember is the end,” she replied soberly, despite his teasing touches.

“What happened?”

She cleared her throat and pulled a leg up to sit sideways in her chair, keeping hold of his hand. “My mother had been gathering cultural data on Earth, disguised as an itinerant wise woman and healer. She would stay in a village for year, and then move on to the next, working her way up the coastline of the Viking strongholds. This worked very well until the towns began converting to Christianity. After that, a homeless pagan woman came to be looked on with a bit more suspicion.” Nadia’s mouth took on a bitter hardness as she said this. “During this conversion process, I came to visit Mother to observe her work. I had just begun what Midgarders might call university, and a professor encouraged me to work with Mother for a short time and study her methods. Mother was against it. She had never wanted me to take up that line of work, anyway, and now felt as though it was no longer entirely safe. But I was only to be there for a few months, and she had plans to move back to Asgard after the winter ended.”

Here she paused a bit with a bitter smile, as she massaged his hand like a set of worry beads. She kept her eyes on the floor to avoid Loki’s direct gaze. “As in any poorly told story, she never made it to spring. The local priest declared spiritual warfare on the old religion and fired up a group of ignorant parishioners eager to prove to their young wives that they weren’t distracted by the lovely witch on the edge of the village. They arrived on the birthday of the local patron saint, trussed her up, slit her throat and tossed her into the trash heap outside the village fence. I only survived because she got me to hide in the shed, insisting she could talk them into leaving her alone. She turned on her homing beacon just before she went out to face the mob, but a portal didn’t open to retrieve us until it was over.”

“What did you do?” he asked, clearly expecting a tale of merciless retribution.

She shrugged: “I went home and finished school.”

He pulled his hand away and sat up. She could see the outrage in his face, as well as the confusion. He was mystified by the resignation in her manner and in her heart. A loose empathic bond persisted after the spirit walk and he could feel her struggle with the trauma and guilt that lingered, even after hundreds of years had passed. He could feel her lingering sense of helplessness over the events. How, then, could she possibly have been so passive after such an unforgivable assault? “You just left? No one did anything?” She shrugged again, brushing the tears off her cheeks and trying to scrub the tension out of her face. “There was nothing else to be done,” she replied.

He drew back in disbelief: “So they just got away with it? Did no one punish them?”

“That’s not what we do. We are not warriors, or agents of justice. Unlike your people, our strength is in accepting responsibility for our errors and learning from them – ‘pain builds character.’ The faculty at the Archive drew up new guidelines for researchers working on earth – no females could travel there without a male companion, because the cultures had become too misogynistic. Those villagers, they did not understand what they did, and we should have seen the signs that our presence was unsafe. I haven’t been back, and have only conducted field work on Asgard and Jotenheim since.”

“What about your father?” He remained mystified by her passive acceptance of such an enormous injury.

“My father never traveled off world. He was an artist, not a researcher. He wasn’t even empathic.” Loki shook his head in disbelief, and couldn’t resist a parting shot: “They should have at least paid a blood price for their crime – any Norseman would have understood that.” He sat back in his chair and re-opened his book, effectively ending the conversation.

She also turned away, and began to put away her tools. She was gratified by his anger on her behalf, but at the same time, it fueled the self-recriminations that shadowed her, both waking and sleeping. _He is right,_ she thought, _I let them take her. She died saving me and I did nothing._

*****

Loki’s character rehabilitation began with a slow dissemination of information, both by word of mouth and through official publications. Odin planned to culminate these activities with a large banquet in honor of the Jotun ambassador to which Loki would be an honored guest as a symbol of reconciliation – between worlds and family members. Odin insisted that Nadia attend as an official representative of her race – “Protocol demands it,” he insisted, and neither he nor Loki seemed to share her fears. They had the utmost confidence in Asgard’s defenses. Her objections were over-ruled. Gowns were ordered. Invitations issued. Rooms brightened, and gifts prepared.

Every preparation added to Nadia’s anxiety. _Not anonymous. Not nobody. Not safe_. Word would eventually work its way around to the wrong ears that at least one of the Gwyrioneth had survived the slaughter, and had taken up residence precisely where the Enemy least wanted her to be. It would also soon become public knowledge that their one-time confederate was both alive and enfranchised, probably because he had revealed the true nature of their association. Revenge would be an additional motive for their reappearance.

It would take some time, though – a good piece of revenge always takes a bit of planning and reconnaissance work. Meanwhile she painted, trained with Sif, and began sporadic supplemental training with Loki – he reasoned that she needed to learn defensive strategies more subtle than those she could pick up from Sif. The warrior was a skilled fighter, but Sif was tall and muscular, while Nadia was much smaller, lighter.

“You need to learn how to use your size to your advantage,” Loki insisted, “to be more sneaky.”

He gave her a dagger – one he said had belonged to Frigga – and taught her how to keep it concealed in a way that kept it easily accessible. He then drilled her in techniques designed to use her size as an advantage against a larger opponent, and keep an assailant off balance. These sessions were widely scattered, however, as he still needed to keep a low profile. Practice also had a tendency to be cut short, as the pair frequently became distracted.

His absences, however, were not as frustrating as they might have been, because of the lingering empathic link. Distance, which typically constrained how well she “heard” the hearts around her, seemed to make little difference as to how well she could feel his. Wherever he was, she felt him. He became a constant presence in the back of her consciousness – she felt the high and low tides during his discussions with his brother. She felt his frustration at being forced to remain in his rooms while the PR campaign began. She felt the awkward mix of emotions as he tried to work alongside Odin after having been in charge for so many months. And though the connection was distracting, it comforted her; he was, as it were, present in his absence. At night, especially, when he could not be with her, she found herself often staring off into space, feeling for him, and when she did this, she would pull out the knife he had given her to admire its workmanship, feeling the balance of it in her hand, tracing the pattern carved into its warm amber handle, thinking about the heat of him.

He, too, was aware; he felt the weight of her heart, even when they were separated, though to a lesser degree than she did. This would have been odd for anyone, but was particularly revelatory to one so used to emotional isolation. Even the plain, garden variety of empathy that most beings feel for others was something he had worked hard to clamp shut. He had a gifted imagination, but had used it in the way an engineer calculates how forces interact in a building project, or as an accountant assesses the results of a planned mining operation. He had never been interested in whether his buildings were beautiful, or if the mine irreparably damaged a sacred landscape – the point had always been his own profit. She became, as he had for her, a constant presence whispering in the back of his consciousness. When able to visit her, he felt the comfort his company brought to her. When he was alone at night, he could feel the echo of her nightmares. He chafed at the secrecy his position forced on him, and ached for her warmth.


	9. Of Being Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wake up, Little Rabbit; there’s no more running now.”

_“Know my name is lost.” – King Lear, V.3_

 

 

 _I will never get used to using fire as a light source._ “Can’t we just cover the windows and turn on a lamp?” She asked her mother.

 _"_ Absolutely not,” her mother stated in no uncertain terms. “These people already think I’m a witch. That would give the priest one final excuse to have me killed. We have to be careful, Sannaet.” Her mother drew close and put her arm around her daughter. “Besides, we’re here to record history, not make it.”

Sannaet sank into her mother’s embrace and the safety it represented. _Maybe hearth light is not so bad,_ she thought.

Something disturbed her comfort, though. Out there on the edge of her range she felt malice. Her mother stiffened. “Hide,” she hissed, as she rose to listen at the window. Hatred. Fear. “Get to the shed and disappear.”

The malice moved closer – silent in a way it had never been before. These hearts were icy cold as they oozed through the darkness. Her mother rushed to the doorway as they poured through. A bright flash blinded Sannaet, and then her mother stood staring at her own chest and the gaping hole that had been burned through it.

 

Nadia jerked awake, just as the Enemy emerged through the door of her bedroom, into the light of the morning sun.

*****

Their empathic connection alerted Loki immediately that the enemy had finally come.

They came as fear. Terror. A helplessness as intense and sudden as a knife through naked flesh.

He ran. But even as he arrived, the enemy were already opening a portal to take her away into the blackness. She had put up a good defense – all of that training had not gone completely to waste. Two of the enemy, at least, lay incoherent on the floor – but this was a trained strike force, not a group of mindless goons. Their captain already had her pinned in front of him as a living shield. He was immensely pleased when Loki arrived.

“Excellent!” he crowed, “I had hoped that you would witness the departure of one who has worked so hard on your behalf. I trust you remember the bargain you failed to keep. We are collecting partial payment today.”

As he spoke one of his lieutenants handed over the dagger she had used in her defense. “Even better,” the captain gloated, recognizing its origins and value, “we should put this somewhere to ensure it won’t get lost.”

Loki moved quickly to attack but crashed into a shockwave of pain – Nadia’s pain – as the captain plunged the blade into her thigh and she screamed. The interruption in his forward progress bought them just enough time to melt into the portal before it slid shut and Loki crashed into the wall where it had been.

By the time Thor arrived, Loki had already begun a cold, vicious interrogation of one surviving invader.

Only one prisoner died during the course of interrogations. After that, the prisoners were of tremendous use. By the end of the second day, they were able to pinpoint a location at which to find their target. In fact, once they began to talk, the prisoners gave up a good deal of information. The enemy expected to be found. There would most certainly be a trap.

*****

“Wake up, Little Rabbit; there’s no more running now.”

Nadia jerked awake as her head smacked against the wall behind her. Her eyes ranged around the room in a vague attempt to take in her surroundings. She sat with her back to a wall, her hands shackled to a table leg. _I know this place_ , she thought blearily. _Isn’t this a processing room in the archives?_ They had taken her back to her home world into the basement of the main archive. Its sturdy construction had been intended to outlast millennia of environmental assaults, a permanence which suited it just as well for a military base as it had for cultural preservation. This particular room had been stripped of everything not bolted down – this left the worktable to which she had been cuffed, a few shelves, and a desk at which sat a lumbering, much put-upon lieutenant, to whom the captain turned menacingly.

“Shoot her full of stimulants if you have to, just make sure she stays awake. Her race are all the same – a cesspool of cowards, and the empaths are the worst of the lot. When they can’t physically run away, they try to hide in the rabbit warrens they call their brains. Make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Why bother?” Came the rasping reply. “She’s got no useful information; she poses no threat. We should just kill her and save ourselves the trouble.”

“You lack imagination. Look at her. She craves death – as she ought. She has allowed others to die for her rather than fight her own battles – her mother died protecting her from a bunch of backward peasants on earth; her mentor died in a futile attempt to save her from our forces, and now her lover will come like a little spaniel thinking to whisk her away to safety. She is the lowest form of life. Death is no punishment for her. It would be a gift.” He concluded by aiming a savage kick at her ribs. “No, her only worth is as a piece of rotten flesh left in a trap. She has bonded with the traitor, Loki, and he can feel her pain. It’s only a matter of time before he comes sniffing after her. Just keep her awake!”

Everything hurt. Her wrists were chafed and bruised from the shackles; her face and one eye swollen nearly shut; her breath came in tentative gasps to avoid aggravating the ache in her ribs; her leg shot through with a fiery pain where the dagger still stuck in her thigh. Much worse, though, was the malice oozing from the captain’s heart, and the hateful fear it generated in his subordinate. These manufactured an emotional assault that dredged up the most devastating of memories, stitching them together in a way that obliterated rational thought. _If I could just pull back,_ she thought, _just go to sleep._ Her eyes began to close once more until she was jolted awake by the jab of a needle in her neck, and another blow across her face.

“Stay awake, Little Rabbit.” Came the rasping voice of the lieutenant. “I’m not going to lose my place over some cowardly witch who runs into her burrow at the first sign of trouble.” He wandered back to the desk, as the door slammed behind the captain. “’No questions,’ he says, ‘just keep her awake,’ he says. ‘Give her a jab now and then to give her some character,’ whatever the hell that means. Effin brain tamperer, you are, not a decent fighter. Where’s the honor in that?” He sat down heavily in the chair.

She felt the chemical buzz as the stimulant took affect. Her skin began to tingle and the bruises throbbed as the blood rushed through her capillaries. She watched him rummage through the desk drawers, and analyzed the feelings he broadcast – anger, resentment, fear, insecurity. He probably hated his job, feared the captain, resented having to supervise such an insignificant charge – he was a warrior, and she was a helpless non-combatant. The combination turned him into a perfect bully, which was exactly what the captain wanted.

He made a little noise of triumph at something he had discovered, making a little pile on the desktop before starting to flick little paper fasteners across the room at her face.

After two days of painful, chemically-driven wakefulness, Nadia began to hallucinate, a delirium aggravated by the knife wound in her thigh that had become infected. Fevered visions swarmed past her eyes — a dancing hearth fire, her mother’s bloody face, Laera as she turned her back to set off the explosives — and all of them merged together with the faces of the guards and the captain.

Far from deadening her empathic sense, however, the physical strain along with the lack of mental distractions intensified the emotions she sensed from those around her. All of her filters had come down, and she sensed the hearts of her guards with nearly telepathic detail, seeing flashes of memories, and hearing random thoughts. Her senses also stretched out farther than usual, reaching into nearly the entire building. And while this turned out to be merely a few dozen rather than the hundreds that could have occupied its halls, her thoughts still sloshed around chaotically in a muddied collage of emotions not her own. In some tiny corner of her consciousness, she could still feel Loki as a distant echo, but as she sank more deeply into delirium, his anger during the interrogations merged with the malice of her captors, then manifested itself in the voices of her hallucinations. Her mother berated her for her lack of caution; Laera issued scathing diatribes expressing her disappointment.

Nadia was pulled out of her waking nightmares by a shift she had been dreading. A quick blank where Loki’s heart had been suddenly transformed into telling clarity. He had crossed the Bifrost, and was now on planet with his brother, and they were moving closer to the Archive. She closed her eyes tight and shouted as loudly as she could: _No! Go home!_ But as soon as her eyes closed she was delivered a sharp blow and a curse from the guard. “No sleeping Rabbit! Haven’t you learned yet?”

Nausea born of her fear slowly augmented her fever dreams as she sensed them coming closer to her location. Yet the worry finally roused her out of the paralyzing self-pity she had wallowed in for the past days. _He has to stop. He has to go home._ Her thoughts were interrupted by the voice of her mother rebuking her – “He’s only here because you are here. He can feel your presence.” _He has to leave,_ she countered. Laera’s voice broke in, “safety in anonymity, my dear. Why do I always have to remind you of protocol,” she said, her voice thick with disappointment. _Right. I have to disappear. Become nothing. No one. It’s the only way he’ll stop looking._

She gathered the few rational thoughts she could and focused them on the guard. This one had a penchant for wandering off into disturbing sexual fantasies about the captain, so she began to focus on that. She thought at him as loudly as could manage: _what if he came to you as you were returning to the barracks tonight, and demanded you accompanied him to the far reaches of the building where no one could hear your screams?_

She saw the leer spread across his face as his thoughts followed in the direction she pointed, and she knew he had become thoroughly distracted. Then she began to concentrate on her surroundings. She needed to disappear. She focused on the sharp edges of the table leg to which she remained shackled, the hard floor, the wall at her back. She imagined the color and texture of each element, until she mentally “became” her surroundings, and the guard forgot her entirely.

Nadia could still feel Loki as he and his brother worked their way down into the basement of the Archives. _If he can’t feel me, he can’t find me,_ she thought. _He will have to go back home._ Nadia pushed back at her delirium, and picked a point in the middle of the room, staring at it without focusing on it. She then began to slowly gather her thoughts into herself thread by thread, withdrawing her conscious self entirely into the back recesses of her mind. “Safety in anonymity” was her last thought as she became entirely anonymous. Her eyes became empty glasses. Her face was an expressionless mask.

She became No One.


	10. Of Desperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It is harder to extinguish the light than you think."

_“The very place puts toys of desperation,  Without more motive, into every brain  That looks so many fathoms to the sea  And hears it roar beneath.” – Hamlet, I.4_

The Bifrost set Thor and Loki down just a few streets away from the Archives. What they saw was a grotesque contrast to the images Loki had seen emerge from Nadia’s brushstrokes — the ruins of what had been a stunningly beautiful civilization, each building a perfect melding of form, function, and aesthetics. They cautiously walked on streets constructed with artistic care. Once gorgeous structures were interspersed with what had been meticulously laid out and cared for green spaces with refreshing walkways and places to loiter – even the benches had been designed both for comfort and beauty. Yet what remained was merely the broken evidence that all this had once existed. Months-old corpses lay scattered among a silent wasteland, blackened by the malice and ordinance that had torn it apart.

As they approached the Great Archives it seemed impossible that any part of the structure could be fit for use. “They must have lied to us,” said Thor. “There’s no way they could make use of this ruin.”

“Fortunately one of us paid attention in school,” Loki sneered. “The upper floors of the Archives are a tiny fraction of the usable space. The floors below ground were designed for permanence – a place to protect the histories of dozens of realms from the ravages of the elements and of time. The walls are as much as a meter thick. Ventilation and power systems were designed with multiple redundancies to enable sections of the structure to operate independently of the others. It puts nearly every military base to shame.”

“Don’t push me, Loki.”

Cautiously, they made their way through the debris and into what remained of the building’s lobby. Loki began searching with a sense of purpose, while Thor wandered around at a bit of a loss. “If it’s so big, how will we ever navigate through its corridors? How can we hope to find our way?”

“Ah ha!” Came a cry from behind a pile of twisted shelving, and Thor pulled these out of the way to see what his brother had discovered.

“I suspect,” Loki said to his brother sarcastically, “that finding our way down will not be the problem. The problem will be getting back out.” And here he stepped away from what appeared to be a three-dimensional map of the entire facility, clearly marking stairwells, major attractions and corridors, and bearing a bright green marker labeled “you are here.” It had been, after all, a public building. They tried to commit as much to memory as they could, making particular note of the exit routes. Afterward, they decided to follow a path that seemed to have been cleared by the enemy’s forces.

Thor was, however, particularly irritable. Loki seemed disturbingly distracted. Even before they arrived on planet, Loki had been acting oddly. His voice halted in the middle of conversations with a wince. He periodically stared off into nothing, his expression fixed and taut. As they descended the steps into the Archive, Thor could see Loki visibly grimace as though he had been struck. Loki had never been a fighter to lead from the front, and he hated being underground, but was certainly no coward. Thor could not explain this behavior and found it positively unnerving.

*****

After hours of negotiating a maze of stairways and corridors, Loki and Thor emerged from a staircase into a smallish room that might have once served as a reception area. As they stepped into the room, Loki began to feel Nadia’s heart as it slipped slowly into non-being. He doubled his pace across the room to the opposite door. Locked. He felt panic well up into his chest for the first time since he was a child. “Thor, open the door. We have to hurry.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Thor bristled at the direct command but moved to force the door, nonetheless. It wouldn’t budge. He crashed in to it. Once. Twice. He threw his hammer, and then was forced to duck as it came flying back into the room and bounced wildly off the walls and floor. The material reflected the energy of the blows, creating, in effect, a big rubber room.

Loki’s anxiety exploded as he felt Nadia’s conscious mind withdrawing farther, leaking away like grains of sand through a pinhole. He pushed Thor away from the door and attempted to pick the lock.

“What’s the matter with you? Loki? Answer me!” Focused as they were, neither noticed the tiny “snick” as the door behind them slid shut and sealed itself. Thor pulled on Loki’s shoulder trying to elicit a response, but Loki just snarled at him and kept trying to decipher the locking mechanism.

“Don’t dismiss me like that. You’ve been acting strangely ever since we got here. Explain yourself!”

Loki shot back at him: “We don’t have time for that!”

Again, their intensity meant that neither noticed the draft coming from the ceiling vents.

“I’m not going any farther without an explanation,” Thor insisted, and then rubbed his forehead with a confused look on his face. Loki, too, began to feel muddled, and shook his head to clear his thoughts, while his actions became more frantic. _No time!_ He thought. _No time!_ Adrenaline rushed through him even as he saw Thor wobble and brace himself against the wall in his peripheral vision. Frustrated, Loki stood and began to crash into the door over and over, trying to force it open. Thor clumsily reached for his brother’s shoulder to try and hold him back, but Loki shrugged him off angrily, “No – she’s fading out. We have to get through.” He hardly registered when Thor stumbled to the floor in a stupor. His own rage carried him through a few moments longer before he, too, slumped against the door, feeling as he did so, the last grains of Nadia’s consciousness slip out of his heart.

*****

Thor awoke slowly with a massive headache. Blearily, he looked around the room, quickly trying to get his bearings and decide on a course of action. He found himself in a small cell secured by an energy field – his hammer resting against a broken display case to his right. The wall to his left was lined with such cases, the containment fields around most of these had been turned off, but a few had been maintained to preserve an array of evil-looking weapons. To one side of these cases, was a wide door. Apparently the room had been built as a display hall, the cases intended to preserve and protect valuable cultural artifacts, like a museum. The large door must have been intended to welcome public groups to view the displays. Thor’s cell was, in fact, a converted display case, reinforced so that it not only kept thieves out, but now kept Thor in. He tested the field – by pushing on it, slamming himself against it, and finally calling the hammer to him – no good. The field reflected energy in much the same way the door had earlier, and Mjolnir rebounded off the shield without effect.

In the middle of the room stood what must have been a demonstration table– it was fairly tall, designed for standing presentations, lined down the sides with drawers and mounted on wheels. Across the room to his right, he could see his brother. Loki was also inside what must have once been a large display case, but was trussed up in a way that forced him to stand facing the middle of the room. Someone meant to put on a show, and wanted to make sure Loki missed none of the details.

Loki himself was resolutely silent – vacant, almost – refusing or unable to acknowledge his brother’s presence. He looked defeated.

Through a smaller door to the left of Thor’s cell, entered the captain, and a soldier carrying a bundle of rags that he unceremoniously dumped on the table. The soldier took up a silent vigil by the one-time public entrance. “Behold the last of the Gwyrioneth,” announced the captain. “Do you like our good work?”

 _What, in the name of my ancestors,_ thought Thor, _have they done to her?_

It, of course, wasn’t a heap of rags. It was Nadia – her face purple with bruises, one arm dangling at an odd angle, the dagger still sticking conspicuously in her thigh, the breeches caked with dried blood. Her face and muscles were completely slack. Her eyes stared vacantly into the middle distance, blinking only in long intervals. Her breathing was slow and gurgled slightly. She was not dead, but could not exactly be described as entirely alive, either.

The sight roused Loki from his stupor like a bucket of cold water. He became entirely focused.

The captain made a production of positioning the table to give Loki a clear view. Once he had everything placed to his satisfaction, he pulled Nadia up by her hair, and pointed her face toward his audience, gloating as Loki’s features locked themselves into rigid fury.

“I would think a liar of your caliber would be pleased at our campaign against history. We can now make things up as we go without those pesky little facts getting in the way.” He let her head drop roughly once more to the table, and looked Loki up and down gleefully. “Oh, don’t be so sad. She’s not dead. Yet. The light still flickers in there somewhere. The rabbit might have bolted into a hole, but we can crush it just as easily as if it were fully present.”

Thor hadn’t taken his eyes from Nadia’s limp form, and was struck with a sudden memory, _Wasn’t that Mother’s knife? Loki gave it to Frigga, and she always had it with her. What is it doing here?_ There was more going on here than he had been led to believe.

The captain walked up close to Loki’s cell to face him directly, “It is gratifying that our reconnaissance work was so effective. Indeed, she seems to have been just as valuable a commodity as we were led to believe. I think we can safely say that we have collected the interest on your debt. Once she is dead, we can then collect the principle.”

“ _Just as valuable”?_ _What am I missing?_ Thought Thor. _What is going on here?_

“Your payment is past due,” continued the captain, still addressing Loki alone, “it is time to put out the light.” He turned his back on the prisoner, walked back to the table, and pulled the dagger from her thigh for the execution – making sure to position himself in a way that offered Loki a full view of the proceedings.

Thor’s attention, however, now became fixed on Loki, whose skin had turned a deep blue, traced by swirling patterns in a lighter shade. His eyes had become blood red, and as he breathed, great puffs of frosty air drifted out of his mouth and nose.

_When did he learn to do that, exactly?_

Loki clenched his fists, and from the points where his flesh touched the restraints sprouted a growing carpet of hoarfrost until the chains were covered in fine white crystals, and burst with the cold. A surreal fog surrounded him, as curls of frozen gasses fell away from his body. Once free from the restraints, he moved deliberately to the energy field, placed his hands on it, and from his fingers grew intricate crystals radiating out at precise angles, which then also sprouted with hoarfrost, white, jagged, but oddly organic in shape. The fog now filled the cell itself and cascaded down the outside of the energy field, until the cold reached the circuits, freezing them solid. The barrier winked off, leaving only the faint smell of ozone.

￼

The captain’s attention had been mesmerized by Loki’s transformation. As the energy field collapsed however, he quickly roused himself to action, dropping the dagger and drawing a much nastier looking blade. Having beaten this child before, he was not afraid now.

Loki closed the distance between them with a confidence born of cold rage. The captain raised his weapon, but never felled a blow. Loki caught his wrist and the frost traveled quickly down the arm of his assailant, up his neck, over his face, and down to the floor. Soon he was covered with fine, white crystals. “It is harder to extinguish the light than you think,” he said quietly, and snapped the creature’s hand off at the wrist, dropped it, and watched it explode into pieces, then he picked him up, and threw his frozen form to the floor where it, too, disintegrated in a fog of ice.

The guard had been dumbfounded by this display, but soon roused himself and started to rush for the door. He never made it. Loki caught him by the shoulders, freezing him solid before toppling him to the floor.

Quickly he freed the Thor and then gathered Nadia from the table. “We need to leave now. She needs help.”

“What about Thanos? What about the rest of this infestation? We can’t just leave them here.”

Loki scooped up Frigga’s knife, and placed it on Nadia’s chest. He took the fingers of her uninjured arm and tried to curl the limp fingers around it.

“ _Please_.”

Finally, Thor understood what game the captain had been playing, and why it mattered. He nodded at his brother.

They exited the room by the public doors, Thor in front to eliminate any resistance to their escape. It could have been a long, confusing maze, and they were stymied at first, until Loki again noticed the signs. It had been a public building, after all, and there were maps and exit signs everywhere. They opted for the most direct route and hoped that the exit would be unblocked by debris – or at least unblockable.


	11. Of Wanderers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Loki was always there, just watching. . . . The bruises on Nadia’s face faded from purple to sickly yellow, but she still stared into the distance. There, but not there."

_“When I wander here and there,_

_I then do most go right.” – The Winter’s Tale, IV.3_

 

The healers placed Nadia in isolation. The enemy had beaten her, broken her arm, crushed the toes on one foot, cracked three ribs. She had an infection where the dagger had punctured her thigh and then remained stuck for several days. These physical wounds had all begun to heal, yet, days after she had begun treatment, she remained unresponsive – her eyes open, though blinking. Her muscles slack and unresponsive. It wasn’t quite a coma – all of the instruments indicated brain activity. But she seemed . . . empty.

Sif stopped by daily to see if there had been any change. Loki was always there, just watching. No one was allowed into the chamber with her – the healers were too worried about infection. So he sat at the window and watched. The bruises on Nadia’s face faded from purple to sickly yellow, but she still stared into the distance. There, but not _there_.

Staff began nervously whispering in the hallway – “It wouldn’t be so bad, if he would at least sit down.”

“I know. He absolutely terrifies me. He just stands there with that horrid scowl on his face.”

“Can’t someone make him go home?”

“Pshht! You ask him. I wouldn’t dare.”

They all just gave Loki a wide berth. Nobody wanted to be in the way if he started breaking things.

Finally his patience did wear out, but not in the way they had expected. One afternoon the healer on duty returned from an errand and found Loki had somehow gotten into the isolation chamber and locked himself in. She pounded on the door, and pleaded that he come out – to no avail. He sat down in the chair next to Nadia’s bed, picked her up, and now cradled her in his arms – his left hand held hers; his right hand held her face, and he bowed so low over her form that she was nearly hidden by his embrace.

The healer called security, but the door wouldn’t budge, and no one was willing to take more drastic action for fear of what he would do. He wasn’t harming her, or himself – just sitting. So they let him

An hour.

Two.

New staff came and went.

Four hours.

Twelve.

The second time Sif visited and found that he still sat motionless over Nadia’s still form, she decided to stay. His brother came, and he, too, sat and kept vigil.

They could just barely see his face through the hair that had fallen around it. Loki’s eyes were closed tight and he seemed to be in deep concentration. His breathing slowed.

￼

****

He found himself in a dark corridor lined with sinister looking doors. Every path threatened some sort of unidentifiable danger as he slowly worked his way forward, searching. Nameless screeching emerged from no particular direction. Fear. Panic. Helplessness. The pain began as a dull pounding behind his eyes then crawled across the crown of his head as it became more intense. It made him nauseous, and his concentration wavered. He braced himself against a wall, but his hand sank through it, and he snatched it back.

_No. Don’t give in. You’re looking for something. What are you looking for?_

He kept walking, and began opening doors as he went. Some opened on empty rooms, some revealed nameless monsters gibbering helplessly. Some revealed cold corpses, all of them the victims of an unidentifiable violence. He walked for hours through a maze of hallways, looking for something – _what had it been?_ He searched through libraries filled with dusty, blank books. Opened desk drawers filled with blank notepaper. Went down stairs, and around corners, through hallways where floorboards creaked and occasionally gave way beneath his feet, opening into yawning nighttime skies.

_What was I looking for?_

_No, not “what” . . .”who” . . . I was looking for someone, someone important. If I only had brought a light –_

He turned a corner only to be over-run by hundreds of screaming, stampeding, panicked people. He pushed his way to the side and ducked into a room. As he turned, he found himself knee-deep in a dung heap, on top of which was the limp corpse of a Norsewoman. When he came closer he staggered back at the sight of Sannaet’s face – but also not quite her face. Surely it was someone else. The mouth was stretched in a hideous scream and the eyes stared blankly through blood-splattered skin and hair.

He staggered back into the hall.

_I need a light._

_\-- a light!_

That’s what he was looking for – light. He walked faster now, with more purpose, and began calling Sannaet’s name.

*****

“Something’s happening,” Sif elbowed her neighbor in the ribs and Thor looked up. A small crowd had accumulated at the window by this time and they peered with great interest at the two inside.

Nadia’s eyes had closed, and they could see tiny, fluttery movements under the lids. The healers checked their instruments and found that her brain activity had increased markedly. She was dreaming, but they didn’t appear to be pleasant dreams. Her face grimaced; her limbs began to twitch.

“What is he doing to her?” someone said. “Hasn’t she been through enough that he has to torture her in her dreams?”

“No,” said Thor, “he’s bringing her back. She can’t come back without help.”

The nightmares seemed to go on for an eternity to those who watched, unable to do anything, but eventually the spasms slowed, Nadia’s breathing became more regular. Tears slowly began tracing their way down the side of her face, and drops began to appear on her shirt from above. The healer checked her instruments again – “Their breathing and heartbeat are synchronized.”

They both took a deep breath.

Then another.

Their eyes opened.

“I was lost,” she said.

“I know.”

“I couldn’t get out.”

“I know.”

She looked around the room, confused, “Where am I?”

“You’re home,” he said, closing his eyes as he pulled her close.


End file.
